The Little Red Hen

Progress Report

I've been busy this week - really.
Do you want to see proof?

The Ishbel - one more row before the bind off! Then blocking. 

 

The Animal Crackers quilt - partly quilted.

Now, it is back to the grindstone. I have the last batch of applesauce for the season on the stove!

I have a few more pumpkins to cook but I'll do those on chilly days to help heat up the kitchen. (We haven't had our corn delivered for heating the house yet.)

B has planted garlic and rye. After we harvest the carrots and beets and store them in the cellar the gardens should be just about ready for the winter rest. Whew.

Halloween Treats

Yesterday, P and I made the treats we will give out to her preschool class. If you are a preschool parent from P's class avert your eyes until a new post appears or the Halloween party has past.

P loves to have small tablets of paper with her when we are out. They are great for restaurants when we are waiting for food or any time when we need a quiet activity. So, we made small books to give out at the preschool Halloween party.

I wanted to make fancy fall covers for them and was inspired by this quilt, that Tia made. I love the way she quilted the veins on the leaves. I snitched her idea and did the same in felt for the book covers.

 

These books were pretty easy to make. We used the paper cutter to cut small rectangles of paper for the pages. After the covers were made we used the basting stitch on the sewing machine to sew the pages and cover together. Easy Peasy.

 

Animal Crackers

After much deliberation about what to do with those alternate star blocks I finally finished the Animal Crackers quilt top.

I really wanted to keep moving on this quilt so I didn't want to go to the fabric shop to find a fabric that would work. I liked the white as an alternate block but fell that the quilt wanted a bit more movement than that. A different fabric there would bring out the secondary star in the design.

The yellow I had was the right color but a bit to vivid and overpowered the animal print. Following the suggestion from Tine on flickr I tried the back of the yellow print. It was just right.

The top is now in the fast growing "to be quilted" pile. I need to work on that pile I guess.

 

I think you might also guess that a certain someone thinks this quilt would look great on her bed. If she keeps this up she will soon be like the princess and the pea with a bed piled high with quilts.

Animal Crackers update

Most of you know that when I start a project I usually don't plan it all out ahead. I like to jump in with both feet and the rotary cutter.  I am glad that I laid a few of these out on the floor to get the idea before I had everything cut.

I have the twenty animal print squares and 80 of the star point rectangles. The block I had in my head is shown in the upper right corner of the photo. Now that I SEE how it is going together I am not going to make the block that way. I think I will cut larger squares to go in the background instead of four small squares. I was originally thinking one white block with a feathered wreath quilted in it. Now, as I look at it again I could do another print or a four patch of different colors.... I like that there will be secondary stars there. Now I have to decide before charging ahead again. 

I also see that instead of cutting two rectangles for the star points between the animal blocks I should have cut one piece and sewn four triangles to it. 

Maybe doing a little sketching before I start would be a good thing. It would have saved a bit of time here and would have ended up with a "cleaner" looking quilt.

A Brighter Day

 

Today was a brighter day. The sun came out and P and I rushed out for a walk around the fields. That was just what we needed. We came in refreshed and started in on our projects.  She is still working on coloring and cut outs.

I, however, started something new.

I am using every last bit of that animal print, some scraps, and some non scrap (gasp) fabrics. It feels good to have the scrap bin under control so that I feel like I can use larger pieces of fabric. The whole little quilt is planned around the animal print. I  measured the fabric (1/2 yard) and then figured that I could cut 3 six inch strips. I cut the strips into squares getting 18 squares and three left over bits. I cut one of the left over bits in half and sewed the halves to the other two left over bits. Now I have 20 six inch squares and no leftover animal fabric. The quilt will now have twenty blocks with animal print centers.

I bet you are on the edge of your seat waiting to see how it will look! I know I am.

Hello

We have been busy with everyday things here this week. Meetings, a concert at school, an academic honors event, cross country practice, homework, groceries, dinner making, baking cookies and muffins, making applesauce, staying out of the rain,  and that sort of thing.

I have also done some custom quilting

and added to my Little Red Hen book collection.

 

I think a spiffy pink cape and blue  clutch purse might improve my next trip to town.  What do you think?

Completed Web

Here is the finished spider web quilt. I had a really hard time deciding how to quilt this one.

 

I first quilted spirals in each web imitating the pattern of a web spun by a spider. Then I set it aside for quite a while until I decided on the quilting design for the background. I finally settled on a leafy vine as a setting for the webs.

 

It is now being enjoyed as our new couch quilt. I do love these scrappy quilts. I even pieced the binding from scrap strip pieces.

 

Please ignore the dust under the couch.

In case you were wondering - it was a very chilly and wet morning for the cross country meet.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezey Swirly Twirly Skirt!

The other day while I was sewing and P was cutting things at her desk she commented that she wanted us to make a skirt for her. She wanted a twirly skirt. We looked through all my fabrics and I didn't have enough of any fabric that she liked to make the really twirly skirt in this tutorial but she did find a pink print that she really liked. 

Today we fashioned a skirt from the half yard of this fabric that I had. I squared it up and cut a 14 inch strip across. I sewed the whole width of fabric into a tube and made an elastic casing at the top. The bottom is finished with rickrack and a folded band of pink fabric so there is not an extra hemming step.  Easy peasy lemon squeezey.

She tried it on and it made her want to dance. I call that success.

Retreat Projects

One of the great things about going to quilt retreat is the uninterrupted thinking time. Often, I get stalled on a project here and put it aside for months or even years. Sometimes when in the daily routine of home it is hard to keep a train of thought going for more than a few minutes at a time.

This year, with the theme "Mixing it Up" we were to mix applique and piecing in one project. I couldn't decide what I wanted to work on so I packed several unfinished projects, my suitcase of scraps, and my collection of solid fabrics.

I had six basket blocks that I made at retreat three years ago. I never knew what to do with them because I didn't think they would make a very  large quilt. I decided to add the vines and make a strippy quilt. I only had scraps of bright fabrics so I pieced them together to make the vines and inner border. 

The dots, or berries, just sort of happened. When some of the other ladies returned from a trip to town with that bright green and black dot fabric I knew that it needed something like that to finish it off. I made my own trip to town and bought some. It is a happy quilt that I never would have planned from the start but I really like how it turned out.

After finishing the basket top I moved to the next project. I had started the center applique piece in a workshop a few years ago but never got past cutting out the vase and a few flowers. I finished planning the applique design but still have a good bit of the sewing left to do. Once I had the center design set I started working on the borders. I'll be adding a double round of saw teeth with a white border in between. I plan to quilt a feathered vine in the plain border.

I am pretty happy with how this one is looking too.

I also made design decisions on a few other projects and now can get to work on them here.  Sometimes the figuring out what to do next can be the hardest part of a project.  It is good to get over that hurdle on a few things.

The last evening of retreat I started working on a project from a "kit."

These are actually triangle scraps pulled from another person's trash! They are cut aways from her flying geese blocks. The colors were so pretty I just couldn't let them get away. P, of course, is waiting to see the fate of this quilt. I don't know how big it will be. I'll just sew squares until I run out of triangles.

Retreat Ambiance

I thought I might set the stage a bit today by sharing some pictures of the location of our quilt retreat.

Traverse Bay.

Shells on the beach.

The "Craft Boat"

Elk Lake.

White Birch Lodge.

Stitching by the water.

Stay tuned for a few project  pictures.