Monday to do list

Dad's quilt on his bed

T-shirt blocks

Pile of cut shirts for more blocks

Scout uniform

2 new bowls

Dad loved the quilt and he put it on his bed right away!  I am pleased with the way it turned out!

Now back to the T-shirt project.  I got quite a bit of it worked on yesterday.  I still have some more shirts to stabilize and add the fabric strips.  For the Scout shirt I am going to remove all the badges, cut a large square from the back of the shirt and then sew all the patches onto the square.  I really need to get a lot of it done today. It needs to go into the mail Wednesday to make it in time.  I have a feeling it might have to be a day or two late.

I also got two more bowls sewn yesterday.  They are for my Etsy shop.  I love making these bowls.  It is always fun to see how the fabrics look while it takes shape.

This is my Design Wall Monday post.  Check out what everyone else is up to.

Finished!

Close up of the front

Close up of the back

Ta Da!

Earlier this week I posted about making a quilt for my Dad.  I finished it this am!  It is now in the washer, my Dad is allergic to dogs and I wanted to make sure to get any stray dog hair out.  And I also feel that machine quilted quilts look better after a trip in the washer.  Something happens, it is "Magic"!  I will try to add a photograph to this post after the quilt drys.

This is my Off the Wall post and also my THIFF.

Side tracked yet again.

Pin Basting away

Oops!  We have a problem

Adding another strip of backing 

I should have left off  some pins

Finishing the center seam

All better

Ready to pin baste the last section

Somehow the easiest things are always way more complicated than they need to be.  I have blogged on that before here.   So last week I was going to charge ahead and get a t-shirt quilt made for my nephew.  Well, I couldn't find my fusible interfacing that I knew I had on hand.  Rather than wasting a long time looking for it I chose to go the store and buy more.  So of course when I started to work on the project I found the old interfacing.  Right underneath the 2 large cuts of fabric that I was using for the t-shirt quilt!  I got two blocks made and then I got side tracked.  Again.

I decided that I needed to make a quilt for my Dad for his birthday on the 27th.  Since it is such a short time line, I needed to go with some quilt top that I had "in stock".  I had made this plaid 9-patch that is a large lap size.  And I had a backing purchased as well. I also had a chunk of batting that I had intended for the t-shirt quilt that is large enough.  Perfect, let's go.

Well I forgot that I hadn't pressed any of the seams during the process of putting all the blocks together.  That took much longer than I expected.  I folded the unpressed, pre-washed  backing in half lengthwise to make sure it was long enough.  Pretty close, I think it will work.  So I clipped the selvage and tore it into two pieces.  Sewed them together.  Wow, there is almost a 3 inch gap.  Oh, I am sure it will be fine.  NOT.  I got most of the top pin basted and realized that where the gap was it was about an inch short.  I was not willing to take out all the pins and start over, so I spliced in a strip (after having to straighten the cut edge, which was about 2 inches off grain, UGH) and of course it was tricky because I didn't leave enough unpinned area to work easily.  Heaven forbid I take a few pins out.  Spliced and finished pin basting.  

I was able to get about a fourth of the quilting done.  I am just doing cross hatched wiggle lines.  But the first direction takes longer because I have to remove the pins as I am sewing along.  I hope to get more quilting done today.  

This is my Design Wall Monday post.  Check out what everyone else is doing at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

Hexagons, ready to quilt into table runners.

Box of t-shirts

Quite the pile of shirts

Fabrics for the background

I am still trying to get back into the swing of things after being on vacation for 2 weeks over the holidays.  On my agenda this week is to get some table runners finished for my Etsy shop. I ran out of time before vacation.  I also have another T-shirt quilt to make for another nephew.  His birthday is the last day of this month, so I really want to get it finished by then.  I was surprised to see how many t-shirts he crammed into the box.  Might end up with a two sided quilt.  I will try to photograph the process and put together a tutorial on t-shirt quilts.  

This is my design wall Monday post for this week.  Check out what everyone else is doing at Judy's blog.

First stop on my teaching schedule this year.

I have my first teaching gig of the year.  I will be teaching 2 classes at the Super Spring Retreat put on by Pie Plate Patterns. They do a very nice job of putting on a local friendly retreat!  And the food they provide is so delicious!  I will be teaching Hudson Bay Log Cabin.  It is a fun variation of the traditional log cabin block.  I have two photographs of different settings below.

Quilt by Carol Watts

My class sample for HB Log Cabin

I am also teaching Wiggle Quilting.  It is my way of getting quilts finished up using gentle curves with a walking foot.  I have many variations of this idea that we will be going over in class.

I hope you will check out Pie Plate Patterns and their retreat.  Tell them Sylvia sent you!

Some inspiration from Arizona!

I spent the last 2 weeks in the Arizona desert with Sweetie and the puppy dogs. We had a wonderful time, but it was a bit colder than we expected. My Off the Wall for this week is some of my photographs that I took for inspiration.