Chocolate bunny word scramble...

Weasley and I have been playing chocolate bunny word scramble.  One of the two UFO's that I am committed to finish right now is "Bunnies Prefer Chocolate" by Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs.  I just finished the embroidery embellishments and got the blocks sewn together.  Now I am ready for a stop border and an outer border.

This is not a very good picture...too dark and washed out, but you get the idea.  The thing that coaxed me (tricked me, really...) into finishing was deciding to put a phrase in the outer border.

I've gotten some good suggestions from friends and blogland. 

The phrase will be: (drum roll, please...)

Just hand over the chocolate...
...and no bunny gets hurt!

As much as I love Tonya's free pieced letters, I decided the roundness of the rabbits called for rounded, applique letters.  I've got them drawn on Freezer paper, ready to cut out, adhere to some fabric and get crackin' on the applique.

I finally took down the Christmas tree ornaments and the new artificial tree segments were stuffed into 2 large tree duffle bags.  They are in the living room until we get them in the attic over the garage.  They look like body bags.  A neighbor popped in today, glanced at the bags, then glanced back at me.  I told her, "that's what happens when you don't get what you wanted for Christmas..."

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

A little weekend building in the neighborhood...

As Forrest Gump would remind us, "Life is like a box of chocolates..."  Since I only have 3 of 12 blocks left on "All Around the Town" (Sue Garmon), I am sort of working on all three at one time...kind of like snacking on a Whitman's Sampler box of chocolate and cramming multiple flavors in my mouth at one time.  But I can't help myself!!  This is such a fun quilt to do!

I just need to fill in the upper left hand corner, then I can add the inner border (the road), the outer border, the cars, and a few last-minute little "rogue" elements in some of the yards.

I got out some of my architectural fabrics so I could pick out my building materials.  That is the fun part!!  Then I have to coordinate the grassy lumps that form the bases of the blocks.  Once all the decisions are made, thing get easier and I can start prepping the pieces using freezer paper and my trusty washable Elmer's glue stick.

I am still planning a tutorial on how I do applique...trust me...THIS isn't a beginner project for my method.  I am going to use "Stars and Sprigs" (Kim McLean) for that (and soon!)  Once my separate elements are prepped, I lay them out on my pattern and use my Roxanne's Glue Baste to LIGHTLY ("dot, dot, not a lot")layer and glue the pieces together. 

Have you ever used these little sewing weights before?!?  I received them YEARS ago as a gift and now use them to keep things from shifting while I work (I think they were intended to be used with tissue sewing patterns).  Fabulous gadget, and I am a gadget girl!

I leave some of the pressed on freezer paper in place to help me line up the pieces while I assemble.  I usually do this over my light box, but for some reason I didn't this time.  I definitely use the light box when I am glue-basting on to my background fabric so that I can really see my pattern through it as a guide.  I like to glue things together in units, then I will applique/stitch the units before either combining with other pieces or stitching to my background.  I do this both for convenience and because I like to trim the background away from behind my applique (if I will be hand quilting heavily).

The church doesn't have very many pieces and goes fairly quickly.  This block seems really crowded so I am removing the skinny little hosue to the left.  I will insert some trees, a rail fence and some animals on the other side of the church. 

The tall blue house had too many really skinny windows, so I made a few changes. 

I am making the last block's house into a "hick house," so I re-worked the block, scaling down the house and making some architectural changes to make it look very rural.  I don't mean to make fun of "hicks" - I am from Alabama, living in Michigan and have "hick" in my blood.  I have "hicks" in my family.  I know about "hicks".  (I could probably provide family photos for Jeff Foxworthy's "You Know You're a Redneck if..." books.)  I am adding a matching outhouse and a few other little rural touches.  I have this old barn-board looking fabric which will be perfect for this house.

The hardest thing about applique can be perspective...what part of the picture to put on top and what to feature to the rear.  I decided to do reverse applique on the windows and doors so they look "behind" the structure, so I glue in those features last.

 

Weasley helped me with the windows and doors.

After I applique these units together, I will embroider little things like window panes and door hardware.

Then I will arrange the blocks from the stitched units (houses, trees, etc.) and do the final stitching.  It felt so good to do a little work on this quarter of the quilt, as I had really developed quite a mental block for some reason.

Fence posts, fence boards and some trees...

I want to share some pictures of a quilt from this book,  "Hobo Quilts: 55+ Original Blocks Based on the Secret Language of Riding the Rails."  My friend Mary Jones made it as a sample for Wendy's Simple Stitches in Howell, Michigan.

She put a train on the back featuring her labels and a picture of one of the gentlemen from the book.  The projects are cool and just reading about the history is really interesting.  GREAT book and great project for a man in your life or anyone who loves history!

While at Wendy's shop, I picked up this cool scrappy quilt pattern.  Their sample (which I forgot to take a picture of...oops!) featured the scrappy units in a vertical setting rather than the horizontal one featured on the pattern.  VERY cool!  Everything is based on 1.5 inch strips and squares.

ALWAYS looking for things that will whittle down my scrap bins!  Just another idea from my "box of chocolates" to nibble on this year...

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Attack of the killer UFO's...

Nothing kills my creativity like quilt guilt.  And nothing gives me quilt guilt like nagging UFO's.

There they are...on a shelf in the quilt cave, right above my daughter's head.  When I am sitting near her sewing, I can hear them nagging at me.  I stop and ask her if she hears anything, like nagging voices...she just looks at me and shakes her head.  Mom's hearing voices again...

I shut up the scrappy bowtie quilt this week by taking a whole 30 minutes to finish quilting it.  Fortified by my feeble success, I have picked the next two to attack.

These are the blocks from Bunny Hill's "Bunnies Prefer Chocolate" - started in 2006, I think.  I bought the whole set of Block-of-the-Month patterns from Jennifer's Quilt Shop in Pinckney, Michigan.  I just need to assemble the chunks and do borders.  I started out following the pattern to the letter like a good girl, then I started going rogue (I just can't stop myself sometimes...), "tweaking" a couple of blocks with my twisted personality.  I think the reason I never finished it was that I was sort of bored with the proposed border treatment.

 

Now I want to incorporate some words in the border.  As enchanted as I am with Tonya's free-pieced letters (Lazy Gal Quilting), I think the style of this quilt calls for some lowercase appliqued words.  I need some inspiration on that (feel free to comment with suggestions!).  All I have come up with so far is:

1) Bunnies prefer chocolate...and so do I!
2) Chocolate...it's not just for breakfast anymore!

And because this quilt is destined to hang over our bed, I made the mistake of asking my husband for his input...he came up with something about "getting your chick's tu-lips off his chocolate bunny" - why do I even ask him anymore...

See why I need help??

OK...enough said...project number 2.  I only lack the the last 3 blocks finishing the center of Sue Garmon's "All Around the Town" that I started in 2010 after ordering the pattern set from Quakertown Quilts in Houston, Texas.

Here's the pattern front.

I've mostly been behaving myself about following this one faithfully, except for a couple of additions.  The last 3 blocks leave me a little cold, which is why I think I have had a mental block about finishing them. 

Cathy of Cabbage Quilts is also working on this top, and her version has filled me with fresh inspiration about how to finish mine.  She did a little off-roading herself, and I love her results!  Here's her top.

I am designing some subtle changes on my last 3 blocks and some additional little things in other finished blocks to make the town my own.  My friend Ola is doing this project as well, and we are having fun discussing our planned deviations and having some good giggles (remember the Gorton's fisherman?  Ola also thinks my town needs a whore house...why does she suggest that for my town and not hers?!?).  Giggles are good.

So, these are my next areas of attack.  I am not making a pledge to finish all UFO's before jumping in on some new projects...I just want to reduce the volume of those nagging, old, unfinished voices so that I can drown them out with the TV or a good movie.  I have also found a great new pattern for reducing my scrap pile, which I will share next time.

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

First finish of 2011 (this UFO was started in 1994)...

Yippee!  The first finish of 2011!  And the embarrassing thing is that it only took 30 minutes to finish...I only needed to quilt something simple on the four corners.  Why I couldn't "inconvenience" myself to finish it sooner is beyond me.   

I stumbled on some notes and found that I started this project in 1994...I wanted a hand piecing baggie project at the time and thought that it would be fun to go through my scraps and cut one bowtie from each thing that caught my fancy.  I hand pieced the bowties over the next few years.  Then the stack of finished bowties sat around for a while.  Then I assembled them without borders and THAT lanquished for a while.

   

Then I was trimming my stash and found enough fabric to border the bowties, which then sat some more before it was basted and finally hand quilted.  Well, you get the idea.  This quilt just wasn't in any hurry to be finished.

Each bowtie block is 6 inches, finished.  I just love scrappy quilts, and especially love a "charm" scrappy quilt where every fabric is only used once.  This kind of project shows my love of the quilting process...each step was therapy...fabric therapy.  Each block is a record that a particular fabric existed in time.  My husband and I were newly married and he used to read aloud to me while I worked.  I can look at some of these blocks and remember snatches of stories.

It was slowly cut out by tracing plastic templates and cutting with good scissors after pressing each large scrap as it emerged from the jumble bag of scraps that I used at the time.  Just like some people like to peel an apple with the peel snaking down in one long, curly, unbroken ribbon, when I use scissors to cut fabric pieces apart, I try to keep the mimimal fabric waste in one unbroken piece.  Isn't that weird?

Then each block was slowly, individually hand pieced...just whenever I had a spare moment.  Lots of time for petting and loving each fabric. 

I'm such a freakin' fabric addict!

It's not a quilt to be entered into a show, not a particular prize, just part of our family inventory of quilts that we will use.  Then maybe it will be part of my daughter's household some day.  I love the old historic practice of a girl entering into a marriage with a collection of homemade quilts...part of her dowry and responsibility upon entering the partnership or just a part of her first home by herself.

OK...what UFO with it's own history will I attack next?

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

New Years "movitation" and quilting mojo...

I am so impressed with everyone out there starting out their quilting new year with a high spirited plan for finishing things (way to go, Mary Lou of Cheaper Than Therapy Quilting...your motivation and cheerfulness is talking me down from the quilt guilt ledge I've been perched on since the big Christmas push...).

I spent some time yesterday evaluating the "2010 To Do List" that I had listed on my blog last year.  I guess I finished a little more than half the ambitious list of active projects listed there.  And some things I finished weren't on the list at all.  I "high 5-ed" myself on the finishes, completely deleted some things that I am going to bury for a while, and formulated a "2011 Must Do List."  I've gone from "to do" to "must do."  Hmmmm...

I'm a list girl, but I'm also a rebel.  It's the new year...I'm supposed to be motivated by resolutions and lists...oh yeah, and the guilt associated with not tackling things on last year's list.  But there were also things I wanted to start that I did not start, displaying GREAT discipline...like "Stars and Sprigs" by Kim McLean.

And I also ordered the pattern for the Antique English Basket Quilt from Threadbear.

I love these two quilts!  They would certainly be long term projects.  And, except for backgrounds (which I've already purchased), I will make these TOTALLY from my stash.

When I wrote the title of this post, I had a Freudian moment...I mispelled "motivation" M-O-V-I-T-A-T-I-O-N.  I decided to keep it (eat your heart out, Stephen Colbert!).  The first part of motivation is MOVING.  I'm not having a MOTIVATION problem, I'm having a MOVITATION problem.

After Christmas exhaustion and a bad cold are certainly not helping.  Finishing something quickly WOULD help.  This scrappy bowtie quilt was hand pieced, hand-quilted and bound EONS ago.  I couldn't decide how to quilt the corners, so I put it aside.  Hand quilting is my therapy, mental and physical, so I'm going to do that...TODAY!!  I just have to M-O-V-I-T-A-T-E myself downstairs to the quilt cave, with a cup of hot tea.  I bet I could finish quilting this thing while watching an old movie.

Then I could smugly snuggle under it while contemplating my next finish...or start.  I smell mojo...

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

The big Christmas pay off...

Here is "Thing 1" (aka Eliza, my niece) digging into her Christmas bag containing her Dr. Seuss quilt.  My little sis is wearing the wig.  The 19-month-old had it on her head and off again before I ever raised my camera to my face.

Katie is pointing out each letter of Eliza's name (thanks Tonya, you and your letters are brilliant!).

The quilt was a big hit!  Aunt "Lolly," my sister Laurie, gave her the cute set of polka-dotted Christmas PJ's the night before, and there was NO getting her out of those for a picture in the "Thing 1" suit, so hopefully little sis will snap a picture of THAT at a later date!

Little 10-month-old Asa (aka "Thing 2," my nephew), was a little slower in yanking off the wig than his cousin.

Since my daughter is now 13, I had forgotten how difficult it would be to get a nice, staged picture of the two of them, each posing sedately and happily in strange wigs and a change in clothes...what was I thinking?!?  One was ready for a nap, one just up from a nap and racing around, more like the Loony Toons cartoon mouse, Speedy Gonzales, than the book figures, "Thing 1" and "Thing 2."  This is the closest we got to a photo op of the two of them, Eliza giving Asa a "drive by" hug and kiss.

My sister, Laurie (aka Aunt "Lolly"), liked her quilt, Chelsea Cottage.

Quilted book bags full of good children's books were also a big hit.

We woke up to a white Christmas in North Alabama, a total surprise, then drove to Philadelphia the day after and had 12 inches of the white stuff on the ground there.  When we drove back home to Michigan a couple of days ago, it was 50 degrees and all the old snow had melted.  Weird.

Ahhh...Christmas babies...my daughter with her first phone and my niece and nephew with a new book...priceless!

Here's to a great new year full of promise and lots of quilting (and the New Year's resolution...again (sigh)...to start EARLIER this year on homemade Christmas items...yeah, right...).

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Last minute FINISHES!!

Yes Virginia...there will be a Santa Claus this year!

 

Dr. Seuss quilts are finished and wrapped (for Eliza, 18 months, and Asa, 10 months).

 

Cottage quilt is finished and wrapped for my sister...(shhh!).

"Olivia" quilted book bag is finished for Eliza...

 

Dr. Seuss quilted book bag is finished for Asa...

 My friend Judy Endres made this ornament for me...

 

My friend Beth Kruzich made these snowman ornaments for me...

 My friend Mary Jones made the Redwork ornaments for me...

 

...AND this beautiful wall hanging...

I will show more pictures of wonderful things after the first of the year.  It's been a crazy month...I turned 50 (and was taken by surprise by my Sit & Stitch friends!)  I've performed and directed LOTS of music in all kinds of styles.  I managed to finish all my homemade gifts.  Now I will be away from my blog for two weeks, enjoying the season with my family, near and far.  I look forward to catching up with all of you in the new year...I've missed you as my seasonal job responsibilities have taken me away from the blogosphere too much this month.

Have a joyous and safe holiday season!!

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)