Re-born Quilter

Yes, I'm still here...

2009-07-16T10:58:00.006-06:00

"Real Life" has impinged on my piecing/quilting/knitting time...I hate it when that happens! But, I've sure got a lot of house-stuff done. Cleaning, sorting, re-arranging, throwing-away, and giving away. And, you know how it goes...one "little" project begets several more projects, and on and on. It feels good to have accomplished some much-needed chores, but the result is that most of my "free" time lately has been spent knitting. It's so easy to just plop down in one's favorite chair and pick up the needles and yarn than it is to get the sewing machine out and clear off the ironing board - I have very little work space, so the ironing board doubles as a place-to-store-stuff.

Be sure to pop on over to http://sewfunquilts-sewmeow.blogspot.com/ to see her amazing give-aways. I am enchanted with all her giveaway packages.

A while back a good friend gave me a sack of her scraps - her colorways are in the yellows-oranges-reds and browns - while mine are mostly the pinks-purples-blues and lavenders. Just what I needed to "warm-up" my quilting projects. What fun I had ironing her scraps and cutting strips for my Goose in the Pond blocks and hexies for my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top.

Today I've used that elusive free time to work on GITP. See the results below...

Sorry about the date stamp. I'm an idiot!

Hexie Land

2009-05-15T09:17:00.005-06:00

Despite my (best-laid) plan to only work on hexies on the week-ends, and devote most of my quilting time to DD's quilt blocks, I've been so seduced by the hexagons that that's about all I've accomplished lately... hexies and a bit of knitting.

If you want to see my hexie progress, check it out here.

I did want to show you the wonderful little prize I received from Quilting Ranny - it came almost two weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to sharing. Thanks, Jean. The soap smells so divine! (I'm using the little zip-lock it came in to store my freezer-paper hexagon templates. They smell wonderful now, too!)

Beautiful Christmas ribbon and heavenly peach-scented soap.

The blocks for DD's quilt are all machine-pieced, while the hexagons are all hand-stitched. I'm enjoying the option of switching from one skill-set to the other.

Happy stitches to everyone! And have a delightful weekend.

Two Projects and Pot-holders

2009-05-09T10:16:00.014-06:00

(All the dates on the pics are wrong - I keep forgetting to Fix It on my camera!)

Not too long ago I nearly burned myself using one of my old shabby patchwork potholders. I decided it was time to make some new ones. What a re-learning curve that was! After several false starts, ripping of stitches, etc., I think I finally got my pot-holder mojo going again. And... you know how one thing leads to another...

Old and Shabby!

New!

Several years ago DD let me know that she really would like to have a quilt made by me...that notion has been quietly simmering on a back burner for a long time. But, when I got out all my fabric stash (nearly all of it is scrappy - and there's not all that much of it), I remembered DD's quilt request. So I decided it's probably now or never. I selected "Goose in the Pond" for the pattern - using green scraps for the half-square triangle "Geese" and non-green scraps for the pond ripples. These are fairly large blocks - finishing at about 15" square. I plan to set them with 3" muslin strips with little mini 9-patch blocks at the corners. So far I have 10 blocks done. I'm thinking about a "flying geese" border, but that's still a long time off. I'm using scraps as much as possible for this quilt - I have lots of lavenders, pinks, purples, blues but not very much in the warm color palette. I bought a couple of fat quarters to help things along. Here's a yellow...

The "Par-Tay" block!

Getting back into piecing/patch-work/quilting-in-general led me to search for quilting and crafting blogs, and because of that I found The Great Hexagon Quilt - Along Too, and I just couldn't help myself - I asked to join-in the fun. (Thanks again, Robyn for letting me in!) I had never done hexies (as they're called) before and had always really liked them, so I joined up and am now addicted. I'm also using scraps for this project.

More hexies soon (I hope).

A little personal quilting history

2009-04-29T09:44:00.005-06:00

For several years I've blogged as Knitting Granny on Re-born Knitter. Recently I've begun quilting again - hence Re-born Quilter. I've been frustrated with some aspects of blogger (and I freely and openly admit that the biggest problem is my own lack of knowledge/ability to figure out how to solve those problems), so I tried WordPress for a few posts but ran into huge problems there...like, when I published a new post, it took the last post I had published and squeezed it into my sidebar. What's up with that???? And one post it just refused to publish at all, no matter how many times I told it to.

So here I am back with blogger, resigned to keep putting up with my own personal blogger-problems. I really do want to post about my quilting adventures, and it's just not fair to my Knitting to keep posting quilting things on Re-born Knitter.

Double Wedding Ring Quilt, pieced and quilted by my Aunts and Grandmother and given to my mother on the occasion of her marriage.

When I was just a little girl, I remember sitting under a quilting frame while my Aunts and Grandmother sat around it, quilting and visiting. I would watch as the stitching lines inched forward making their wonderful patterns on the underside of the quilt. When I was older, I became the needle-threader and kept everyone supplied with ready-to-go needles. Grandma taught me how to measure enough thread (not too much, not too little) and how to knot the end of the thread that came off the spool first. She said it helped keep the thread from getting knots in it during the stitching.

Sadly, by the time I was old enough to actually add my own stitches to a quilt, the Aunts had moved away and Grandma couldn't see well enough to quilt. All through my teen years and college and young woman-hood I kept thinking about quilts and quilting. When my babies came along I made a couple very simple quilts for them (machine quilted). Then came several sets of place-mats and pot-holders (patchwork on the machine, and machine-quilted), and then I quilted a quilt-top my mom made. What a learning experience that was! I had no idea at all how to hide the knots - ended up leaving them on top of the quilt! (We used that quilt for years and the knots never bothered me, not once - even after I learned how to hide them!)

A dear friend took a quilting class - I couldn't afford it - and every week she would come over to my house to pass-along the things she learned in class. Bless her! I hand-pieced a wall quilt for charity, and quilted several quilts for pay and for gifts...but never kept a quilt that I had made from start to finish.

Now, I have two big quilting projects in the works, besides my beloved knitting. More next time!