Decisions Decisions

Since completing the rest of the Beyond the Cherry Trees borders, I have been trying to decide what my Feb OMG will be. Will I assemble all 25 blocks and add the borders for a flimsy?
I can't do that yet. After it is assembled, I still have to finish the corners with a few more cherries and leaves. But before I can do any of that, I want to add a few more birds. At least 4. Oh, and I wanted to write where I was when I was stitching on the blocks. Five continents, three provinces, and countless states.

And, I also want to add the date and maybe my initials. I told 6-year od Devan that I wanted to put the date 2020 on to the red bowl with the fruit in it. She suggested the big green bowl.

 When I asked why she said the red bowl block already has a lot in it and the green bowl did not. She had added extra grapes on it a couple of years ago.


Then there is the case of hand quilting. Do I want to assemble the completed thing and hand quilt it that way? It turns out that way back on Christmas Day I trimmed all 25 blocks to 16 1/2 inches ready to assemble them. Then I realized that the finished blocks are supposed to be 16 1/2 inches making the center 3 inches shorter. The borders would have to be shortened to fit. I left on extra bias vine to blend the corners and did not stitch quite to the end of the pattern. Speaking of pattern, I dropped all the pattern pieces into the recycle bin back in December when I put the final cherries in place. Oops. I will have to figure out the corners from a picture of the original. I like doing that sort of thing. Then it was suggested that I hand quilt each block individually and assemble them later. I have researched the Potholder Method.

I think it is fun now to post a few pictures with borders showing. You will have to wait until later to see what I end up doing. In the meantime, I submitted another course and have writing to do. My goal of 2000 words today is a tad short with 2000 still to go.

Blessings,
Chris
frombolttobeauty. off-wall-friday.

January 2020 OMG Completion

My Jan one-monthly-goal was to complete the final 2 borders for

 Beyond the Cherry Trees. 

And I did. 

The next step is to stitch on a couple more birds. 

I will add the little red bird onto 

David's oops block. 

The red mark on the lower-left corner got trimmed off.

I will be stitching that tomorrow for slow-sunday-stitching.

So excited!

Blessings, 

Chris 

Soon But Not Yet

So after obsessing for the past 5 months about starting the Ella Maria Deacon Quilt and purchasing the patterns each month and preparing background fabric and sorting through countless reproduction fabrics as well as printing off foundation patterns and applique placement sheets, I have decided to not get too far ahead of myself. I am still embroidering stems onto cherry borders and want to complete this first. Also, I have been making small green blocks for my Bright Jane quilt. I am not making all the original Dear Jane blocks again, but I am making some simpler basic blocks as well as some of the Tiny Tuesday blocks from Soscrappy's 2019 RSC sampler blocks. I am having fun again. These are my green blocks for RSC this month.

Wonder what the colour will be for Feb? It's Orange!
Blessings,
Chris
quiltingismorefunthanhousework.  wednesday-wait-loss-156

20 Machine Quilting Goals for 2020

My track record for completing UFOs is rather small. But if I work on each of them a little, then they will all move a bit closer to completion. Or so I tell myself.

I thought I would like to focus on my machine quilting skills. I took a 2-day workshop with Sue Patten in October and invested in a couple of her favourite rulers. She designs rulers and her son has set up a business making and selling them.

So, in no particular order, here are some goals to practice my machine quilting skills on my domestic Brother machine in the coming year. Some of these are either in the flimsy stage or already sandwiched ready to quilt. Others are obvious prep work.

1. Adhere grips onto rulers
2. Wind bobbins
3. Clean Brother machine
4. Clean Bernina machine
5. Practice ruler work on class sample from workshop in Oct
6. Angela Walters Freemotion QAL
7. Disappearing Nine-Patch
8. Disappearing Four-Patch
9. Country Bride 2 appliqued blocks
10. Country Bride 2 plain blocks
11. Country Bride 2 borders
12. Butterflies
13. 1857 Sampler outline blocks and corner leaves
14. 1857 Sampler quilt blocks
15. Dear Jane sashing
16. Dear Jane blocks
17. Dear Jane borders 
18. Quilt Ellyse's I-Spy quilt
19. Quilt Devan's I-Spy quilt. 
20. Teach Ava to machine quilt her quilt. 

Maybe my goals for 2021 can be to bind all these quilts.
Blessings,
Chris

New Quilt Start

My new quilt start for 2020 will be the Ella-Maria-Deacon-Quilt from Sentimental Stitches. I have thought about, dreamed about, talked about, written about and even obsessed (just a bit) about this amazing sampler quilt from 1842. Month 5 blocks will be released on Jan 15 and I will be jumping in then. The plan is to make 50 of the 85 blocks. And why only 50? Because next year my Sweet Farmer and I will be celebrating 50 years of marriage to each other and I want to make one block for each of those years for this commemorative quilt. And how do I decide which blocks I will make? I will start by not making the ones I have made previously and go from there.

But first, I have to sort and organize all the Jane Austin Reproduction fabrics I collected many years ago in anticipation of a very special quilt and this will be it. I even found a 10 yard cut of the most delicious creamy tone on tone fabric for the background.

How can one resist a fabric called "Darcy? I still have an entire bin of 1830-1850 reproduction prints I will have fun sorting through to put with them. There will be no poison green, chrome yellow or turkey red.

The setting triangles will be this Austin Print. I have exactly enough with a few scraps left over to add to the blocks. The stripe is Susannah Scraps. I got a 10-inch stack of those also. This is going to be so much fun. Right up there with a dissertation. I will use this as a reward when I complete significant course work and writing.

I just realized I have not started a new quilt in nearly TWO YEARS when I started Dear Daughter in March 2018. So, I did keep with my resolve to not start a new quilt in 2019.

Blessings,
Chris
needleandthreadnetwork.

2019 Completions

I completed 2 quilts in 2019. Yup. Two. Quilting and Binding. This Almost Irish Chain was started way back in 2004. I took all the partially sewn units to Shipshewana with me back in April. My daughter called up one day and announced they had bought a king-sized bed. So I immediately thought of this quilt since it finishes at 106 inches. The biggest quilt I ever made It took only 8 phone calls to find someone who could long arm quilt it right away instead of putting me on a 4-month waitlist. And, she lives about 5 miles from here! This is the photo she sent me.

She used an edge to edge design called Vortex. I love it! It takes a simple pattern and makes it special.

And of course, Dear Daughter that I made for my mother in laws 90th birthday. It finishes at about 70 inches square. It is all hand appliqued and I machine quilted this one myself.

I wonder how many I will complete in 2020.
Blessings,
Chris
needleandthreadnetwork.

January 2020 OMG Goal

January's one-monthly-goal  will be to complete the last 2 borders for Beyond the Cherry Trees.

Blessings,
Chris
Linking with: elmstreetquilts. needleandthreadnetwork. frombolttobeauty. off-wall-friday.
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