A Finish and Spring is Truly here!

I traveled around quite a bit this month so not much sewing time.  But this past week I did get in enough sew time to get this top quilted.  The fabrics were so cute and the color scheme so pretty,  it was a lot of fun to work with.  I don't think this pic does it justice?  I guess the dark pink and blue throw off the color balance in the light meter or something?!

These pix show off the fabrics a little better. 

The Brights with the pastels are very appealing! 

And Spring has Sprung in our yard!  After 5 years of draught here in California we finally had a decent amount of rain this year and the garden is really showing it! 

We all feel very blessed for this momentary reprieve  from Climate Change!

I hope your Spring is lush and green and full of flowers!

cheers, CW

Rescued Fabric

After the Quilt Show I went back to the Fair grounds the next day to turn in the keys and pick up some boxes of old magazines that did not sell at the Flea Market to take to the recycle.    There were also about a dozen  garbage bags filled mostly with fabric that did not sell.  These were set out for the Fairgrounds people to dispose of.  But being the scrounger I am, I took about half of these bags to sort. I was curious to see what was left and what might still be useful.  Maybe there are better ways to pre-sort our donations and give certain items away rather than taking up space in the Flea Market booth.

I sorted out two boxes of decent garment yardage that the Grey Bears thrift store, were happy to take.  And another box of cotton fabric that I think the members of the Guild would be happy to adopt.  And then there were a whole lot of scraps.  Scraps are kind of a hard sell for most shoppers.  Time consuming to sort through and not nearly as satisfying as picking up a whole piece of yardage.  I have not quite figured out what to do with them yet...

In the course of my sorting I found these "pre-cut" pieces of raw silk.  I thought I might play around with them.

 
I decided to use them as is, just make squares and rectangles with the shapes available. 

With as little squaring-up as possible this was the result:

I have not quite figured out the outer border.  I might have to dip into my stash to finish it off.

Not bad for a bunch of scraps that were headed for the land fill?!

Happy Weekend!

cheers, CW

Another BOM quilt finished and misc. stuff...

 I have not really posted much from my local Guild show (end of Feb.)  I was so tired after the Show I just could not get myself organized enough to look at my pictures.   But I was strumming through my recent photos yesterday and noticed this quilt.  The blocks date back to a BOM I organized back in 2015 (see here )
It's always a delight to see a Finish from a BOM that I had a hand in.  It helps me feel like I'm doing something right!  Lise did a fabulous job of arranging the blocks.  The colors and shadows dance around the top and make those scrappy blocks look so elegant! Brava, Lise!

Here's another "Why Quilt's" Challenge.

Ain't it the Truth?! 

Quilting does make me Happy! Sorry I did not get the label on this one.  I really like the quilting too! 

This was my only submission besides the challenge quilt (see Feb. 25th post).   I really stretched myself on the quilting in this one.  I actually spent many hours on Pinterest searching for quilting styles that I could manage.  And then I made a sampler of all the patterns that I thought might work. 

 Some of the stippling is ridiculously small.  I got started filling in those triangles with small pebbles and then realized I was trapped in the land of the miniature and there was no where to go except finish the row in the same scale.

It made me realize I don't spend nearly enough time practicing my quilting.  I'm still pretty old school.  I don't like super heavy quilting on my quilts.  I admire the skill that it takes to produce it but my main goal is still to make quilts to be used and cuddled and I think sometimes the heavy quilting can detract from that.

Oh, well, onward  and outward.

Always trying to find Balance.

Happy Week to you all!

Spring is almost here!

Hang in there!

cheers, CW

Another Baby Quilt

One of my dearest friends from college invited me to her daughter's is Baby Shower.   Well of course I had to make a quilt!  Claire did not want standard baby colors but she is a great lover of animals so I used that as a starting point to design her baby's quilt.
It started like this....

But that just seemed toooo busy.   I think I was working to hard at including as many animals as I could so I pared it down a little and repeated a few things and I think it was a little more together.

I spent a small fortune on these cute fabrics but now I have a lot left over for more kid quilts which will be fun!

Here are some of the fabs... 

The cat fab had to go in the center since the mother to be has a cat.

She also loves dogs so there's several kinds of cat and dog fabs...

Of course I had to get in a few nontraditional fabs in there... 

                                  And some owl fabric, we all want our children to be wise!

And since the new parents to be are both Lawyers there needed to be some nod to the importance of words and language and I actually had this cute flannel print in my stash!

I made a Tomatoe Tart for the event.  It's so easy and tasty (especially if you buy the pie dough all made) 

It's a nice switch-up from your standard quiche.

Here's the recipe. 

The Salt portion reads" 1 tsp.  1 Tbsp but it should just be 1 tsp. of Salt which is sprinkled over the tomatoes.  And bake at 450 degrees, check after 25 minutes.

Last but not least, a little repair job.

My son brought this quilt home for me to repair.  It's a baseball quilt I made for him when he was in Little League,  He was probably about 11 when I made it.  He's 25 now so it's pretty old.  Anyway he managed to poke a small hole in th black border.  By some miracle I actually had a scrap of that fabric (and knew where to put my hands on it) and I was able to repair the hole.

With a little wonder under and some invisible stitching you can hardly see the repair!

(it's right in the middle)

If you zoom in you can see it. 

It's been a fun weekend!  'Hope yours was too!

Cheers, CW

Local Quilt Show Does Good!

Well the Squirrels in my head are running as fast as they can.  This is a by- product of the last 5 days of Quilt Show production.  But the Quilt Show went really well and we did not get Rained out so I'm happy.  And now I can get back to my sewing room!
Here's what I made for the Challenge Quilt.  The theme this year was "Why Quilt's?"  This was my answer in the form of a Pie Diagram. The Challenge fabrics were the 3 red fabrics and the shirting fabric in the upper left.

I had a long explanation that went on the label but somehow I forgot to take a picture of it, but you get the idea.

Happy Monday!

Cheers, CW

The Bees have it!

I started this post last Fall but it's been sitting in "Drafts" ever since.  I thought I would post it now since I don't really have time to write much these days.  Bees are fascinating animals.  We owe about 70% of the production of all  of our food to Bee activities.  Whether it's direct pollination of crops or the pollination of plants used by other animals for food. 

Here's a peak inside one of my hives:

I opened my Bee hives last Fall and shifted things around a bit to get them ready for the Fall weather and harvested a little honey while I was at it.  The bees got very creative on their comb formation on this frame.  You can see the square edge of the frame and normally the comb would be built straight down but because there was space to the right they built out and made this massive honey comb thingy.  So I shaved off the stuff sticking out to the right and that is what I took away as my portion.

There's a great book called "Bee Democracy"  that explains how Bee colonies work.   If only our Government could work as cooperatively as a Bee Hive!

Of course the whole thing is run by the female Bees.  I've always wondered how a female majority would do in Congress?!

Cheers, CW

Looking at the Clock...

Once again time has flitted by. While I have been sewing I have not been posting.
Here are some of the things I've been working on in the past month.

Baby quilt for a friend of my daughter.  They've been friends since pre school.  Does make me feel a bit old but I'm very happy for her!  Shown here as a flimsy but I did get it quilted and bound and it's ready for the mail!

From a pattern.  It was an interesting construction.  That part was fun but the packet of fat quarters,  in my opinion, did not really jive very well and I had to monkey things around to balance the blocks. But it will do for a donation quilt.

This is an all flannel quilt  made with a layer cake of cute winter theme prints.  I got it all pieced and quilted before xmas in hopes of sending it as a holiday gift to my son's family.  I don't even remember why it stalled out and I could not get the binding on .  Oh well,  I'll be way ahead on my gifts for this year!

I'm determined to improve my machine quilting skills so I put this cheater panel on the frame and doodled around.

It was fun!  and I think it will make a fine donation quilt!

Here's the back,  you can see my boo-boos  but they don't really show on the front 'cause it's so busy!

This next quilt was inspired by a Layer Cake of solids.  I am currently practicing on a solid white top with grey thread.  When I finish that I'm going to try this one.  Much more challenging all the mistakes will show Back and Front!

These last two quilt tops were finished a long time ago.  I don't generally job out my quilting but there's a new machine quilter in town and I thought I'd give him some business and get some of my donation quilts finished

He has 2 of those big fancy computer guided quilt machines and he's been very busy right from the beginning just with local customers.

For this first quilt he chose an Oak Leaf and Acorn motif I thought it suited the Fall color theme of the quilt pretty well.

And for the second top he chose a swirl, that was a pretty good match too!

I was generally pleased.  I'm not wild about overall patterns but it gets the job done!  And I'm already +3 on my charitable quilt's quota for 2019...that is if I can get my butt in gear to bind them, lol! 

Part of my being so MIA in blogland is that I'm the head chairperson for my local guild's Quilt Show this year.  I consider myself a pretty good worker bee but I'm not a great admin. type person so I've really been feeling challenged.  But I have a great crew of committee members and we are all in all pretty together!  And the Fair is at the end of Feb. so my job will soon be over!

'Til then my posting will probably continue to be spotty at best.

I hope you are all having a wonderful new year!

Cheers, CW