Cspoonquilt

It's Kind of odd that my last blog of the year should be about garden stuff instead of quilting but I had to make this batch of jam today or risk the fruit going bad.  And the story behind the kiwi's is one of my bigger garden accomplishments this year!  How you ask?    Well first off, once planted, Kiwi vines take a number of years to reach fruition. Secondly they are one of those funny flowering plants that have both male and female flowers on separate vines and you have to have both sexes growing in close proximity to ensure fruit!  So we planted 1 male plant between 2 females plants.  What a lucky vine!  Well a couple of years back ( before they started fruiting)  the male dies, I know go figure!  We had to plant a new male vine,  delaying the fruiting action a few more years.   This year we actually had enough fruit to make a batch of jam!  I always feel like I've really accomplished something when my gard...

I treated myself to a little retail therapy before xmas.  A 1 pound bag of homespun plaid scraps!  The scraps turned out to be a whole stack of selvage to selvage strips 4" to 5" in width.  They were pretty but the quality of weave was not great so they weren't going to make good fabric for fine piecing so here's what I did. This is a quick technique to turn those strips into scrappy blocks like those pictured above. First cut off about 5" from the selvage end of each strip. Generating a nice stack of patches. Some square, some not-so-much, but for these wonky blocks it will work just fine. Next cut the remaining wide strips into 2" and whatever was to the right of the ruler, some strips will be a little less than 2" and some a little more. Then I match-up each patch to a strip.  Since they were all in the green, red, brownish family they all coordinated pretty well together. Then each patch got sewn to one end of a strip. Sew one after the...

I finished another Medallion quilt, this one is really simple, but the fabric really makes the quilt.  Picking an interesting fabric for the center can make all the difference. When quilting I treat each border separately,  When I use an interesting print I try not to cross over the design with quilting.  Usually, I echo quilt like here.  It's one of the advantages of using a longarm More echo quilting. When I have a open space I try to design a free motion doodle that fills the space.  I practice drawing it on paper until I can draw it fairly accurately in repeat. On the border I used parallel wavy lines.  I use these a lot on borders instead of stippling cause I think it's less distracting over a pretty print like this one.  Something about the regularity of the design, I think. This quilt is another one to be donated to  The City of Hope for a cancer patient. Happy Holidays!  Claire W.

Why do I ask?  Well the blog Hop is over.  And I need to mail out some FQs!  The fellow at the USPS said under 13oz. could be sent by flat rate for $1.70 any where in the US. I wonder if I can find an envelope that only weighs .2 oz?! I'd like to thank all the people who left helpful comments.  There were many and I am absolutely going to implement some of them as soon as I can consult with my techno support. So for my 'judges choice award'  there were two gals who really out did themselves I couldn't choose so I am giving them each 10 FQ's.  I hope you will agree these were both pretty clever submissions!? First Carol M wrote: CaroleM December 10, 2012 1:05 PM I make the effort this afternoon to leave a comment that will make you swoon a poem, a rhyme, a bit of prose I hope may leave a sweet scent in your nose. Might I admit, if it is okay that blog hopping tends to eat up my day I come across so many wonderful stops from page to page I seek...

Another  Give-Away! Yahoooo! I am participating in the  Quilt Gallery Birthday -Blog Hop Party w/ Give-Away . (link to the right) In the last blog hop I offered the following give-away:   I’ve been collecting fabric seriously for more than 20 years.   So here’s my give away.    TEN  -  Fat Quarter’s  (that’s a $25-$30.00 value) selected from my stash tailored to the request of the winner!   I’ve pretty much got it all; batiks, repro’s from the 1930’s and 1800’s, all colors, kids fabrics, bugs, food, flowers, oriental, flannels, plaids, etc...  The winner can request a smorgasbord or all of one kind.  Fun for you to make a wish list, fun for me to tailor a collection just for you. Based on the comments people seemed to like that a lot!  So I'm going to offer that again as my Grand Prize. But since I had soooo many visitors the last time I thought I'd better add a few secondary trea...

So while I was away from home, I managed, with the help of my trusty Featherweight to sew 6 tops!    What with all the chores that greeted us when we got home it took awhile to circle back around to my sewing room to get some of those tops quilted.   I’ve managed to get 4 tops quilted and bound in the last couple of weeks. Of course it helps that I have a Longarm, that shortens the quilting time considerably! -I really like the way this one turned out.   Pink and green is always a winning color combo. -I used a couple of ‘old stand-by’ free motion patterns; I call the one in the squares the Amoeba because it can kinda takes the shape it needs to fill, whatever space that is. - And it all creates a pretty nice pattern on the back. -This quilt is so simple I wanted the quilting to be a little fancier. -I made kind of an open square-ish feather wreath.   That worked pretty well but when it came to the same block in the ...