Oh, nothing, just de-boning some shirts.

To say my task of preparing these 22 shirts, so I can cut them with my rotary cutter is daunting, would be an understatement.  I actually walked by the shirts for half a day before tackling this part of my project.    My friend Nancy McFall suggested Bonnie Hunter's film tutorial on de-boning a shirt.  That tip has been invaluable.  Bookmark or pin it, because you may need it.  I mentioned Nancy in a previous post.  We have a lot in common; booksellers, married to retired police officers and quilters.

So, far I have 11 shirts de-constructed; 11 more to go.  One additional step I'm taking is snipping off all the buttons.  Why?  I'm 70, my parents went thru the Great Depression, and taught me many lessons about thrift.  This one stuck, never throw away buttons, you never know when you'll need one.  Each shirt has at least 11 buttons, most have more.  High count is 15, on the long sleeve shirts.  Don't worry, I'll use them for one thing or another.

May your bobbins always be full,

A New Project, Memory Quilts

A month ago I posted about being commissioned to make two memory quilts.  It took awhile to get everything organized and some basic decisions made.  I received the about shirts and I was very happy with the quality and variety; those two factors will make for great quilts.  I took the shirts to the cleaners to be lightly starched and pressed.  Have I told you that I really dislike ironing clothing?  I'm sure I have.

One of the things that took a long time, after receiving the shirts was coming up with designs.  I wanted my customer involved; afterall these two quilts will hold many important memories, and I wanted her and her 6 year old to love the entire quilts.  I submitted many design ideas and they settled on a patchwork with a heart for the young lady and a pinwheel design with a border for the Mom, "D".  These are the design ideas that I'll put my spin on.


                       source                                                         source

I'm almost ready to start cutting into the shirts, but I want to do some more thinking/figuring on the pinwheel quilt.  I did order some solids for the backings, and maybe bindings, from Winter Creek Cloth.  Blue was "D"'s husband's favorite color.

May your bobbins always be full,

A Quilt Back for Simply Woven Quilt.

I had very few scraps left over from the jelly roll of Tranquility I used for the Simply Woven quilt top.  I love to use scraps, so I pulled some solids that I thought went with Tranquility and patched together those with the jelly roll scraps.

The black print is leftover wide back fabric from The Lighter Shade of Pale quilt I made for my daughter Carrie. All that still wasn't enough, so I edged the top and bottom with some black form Moda.  (I really don't like this black because it's printed, not woven, but I thought it worked well with this project.)

May your bobbins always be full,

We have a winner!

Becky of My Fabric Obsession is going to receive a FQ bundle of BluePrint Basics.  Becky, I've sent you an email.  As soon as I have your shipping info, Winter Creek Cloth will get it to you.  Thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway.

Now, to do some stitchin'.

May your bobbins always be full,

Simply Woven Quilt Top is assembled.

My least favorite thing about quilting is "pressing the seams open", but some quilts require it.  This quilt has too many little seams and joins to have a chance of being flat, if the seams are not pressed open.  I really like the way this quilt top turned out.

A close up.

And a shot from the back shows all that tedious pressing; but I know it will make it a lot easier on the Janelle, my long-arm quilter.

Making the quilt back will have to wait until later in the week.  Tomorrow morning I have to clean the house, teach Tai Chi in the afternoon and in the evening our card-playing group is coming over.

Wednesday is the monthly Parkinson's Support Group, and I'll lead Tai Chi.  Plus I've got some errands to do.  Life gets in the way of quilting all too frequently.

May your bobbins always be full,

One more block and some progress.

This is the Woven block I made out of scraps.  It's my favorite of the 25 blocks I've made.  If I made another quilt using this block, I think I'll make all the blocks scrappy.  The scrappiness is subtle, and I like that, too.

Today, I managed to stitch all the rows together.  For my layout I tried to keep it scrappy by twisting the blocks left-right and up and down.  There's an afternoon breeze happening, so  I anchored the bottoms with more clothespins.

Frisco is doing really well, today.  He's mostly resting and he's a little grumpy.

I'm going to wait to stitch the rows together.

Ben's always close by.  He's a really good little guy.  His nickname is Ben Rivers, because he doesn't do the "normal" marking thing when we go for a walk.  He lets it all out at once, like a river.

May your bobbins always be full,

Slow but Sure Progress

I've been making steady, if slow progress on piecing the Simply Woven blocks.  I ended up with 24 blocks.  I've been playing with them on the dining room table; I'm trying to end up with a balanced layout.  I'm really not satisfied with either a 4 x 5 or 4 x 6 layouts.  I think I'll make one more block out of scraps; so I'll have a 5 x 5 layout and the quilt to will be about 60" square.

In other news, 6 weeks ago we adopted two dogs.  They needed homes and we needed dogs.  This week we took them to the groomers, and on the way home, Frisco, above, managed to lower the rear window and jump out.  He landed under the car and was run over!  Frisco got up on his own, walked to the sidewalk and waited for Bob.  Bob took him straight to the vets office, and he had surgery this morning.  He's home now and doing great.  He was hurt much less than we imagined, which is a relief.

Here is a photo of both dogs.  Frisco is 7 years old and a large Cocker, we're calling him an American Cocker Spaniel mix.  Ben is only one years old, and 10 pounds.  He's a terrier mix; his coloring is like a Cairn Terrier, but he's much smaller than any Cairn we've ever had.  The dogs get along great, which is great for us.

If you haven't entered the giveaway, you still have more time.  Go here to enter.

May your bobbins always be full,