Charlotte's Baskets

Sew excited to share this finished quilt!  My sewing machine really gets humming in January and February here in the Bold North - or Cold North depending on your point of view. 

Charlotte's Baskets is queen size and a Bonnie Hunter pattern from her book String Fling.  I had made up quite a few scrappy string blocks just for fun, and found this pattern was the perfect way to use them all up. 

Originally, I started quilting in a Baptist Fan pattern, but after using up one bobbin I set it aside.   My shoulders were so tense from manipulating it through the machine.  Weeks went past, and the Holidays too.  Resolving in the new year to get going on some UFO's, I decided to rip out the fans and go with a more straight-stitch grid pattern with the walking foot.  Triple Zig-zag on the widest and longest setting looks great on the navy sashing and border.  The only free-motion quilting is some loops and stars on the string block corners and in the string border.

A new marking method worked okay.  I used a gray ultra washable Crayola marker on the orange border.  The markings were sharp and did not fade or brush off like chalk markings have.  The marks don't come off with just a damp towel.  I had to wash the whole quilt, but they all came out. 

The next unquilted top has been layered and pinned.  All set to go!

2017 Year-end wrap-up

Time to take stock of what got done when I had time to Quilt Awhile this past year.

The fabric stash was decreased - at least I think so.  From what I kept track of, it looks like I used up 80 yards of fabric and only bought 49 yards.  A concentrated effort was made to shop my stash first, and only buy what I need to complete a specific project.  Did pretty well until the end of the year sales. (sigh)  But, it is the first year I've had a net decrease in yardage since I started keeping track.  Hooray!

My best UFO accomplishments were to finally quilt up two of my Bonnie Hunter queen quilt tops from previous years, and finish piecing the queen size Calendar quilt top started years ago.

My new skill for the year was to make two wall hangings with wool applique.  I'd never tried that before.  (There's one more in progress, but I've stalled out for now.)

Completed quilts:
4 Queen or larger:  Three Bonnie Hunter designs were quilted and finished this year -Easy Street,  Celtic Solstice, Alietare
In addition, there was a flannel and denim quilt for my DD and SIL that was at least Queen, maybe King.  It sure seemed like a beast going through my DSM.

3 Lap Quilts:  Courthouse Stars, Medallion sew-along, and the State Parks bed runner.

1 Baby Quilt: State Parks

2 sets of 4 placemats:  Halloween/autumn, Let it Snow (Christmas gift)

But it must have been the year for table runners and wall hangings.

5 Table Runners:  Vertical and Horizontal Garden Baskets (one a gift), Birthday, LeDuc Bunnies, and the pink one from the thrift store pants.  (I still haven't named that one but it turned out so much better than it sounds. ha!)

6 Doll and Mini Quilts: Log Cabin mini, Striped sashing doll quilt (gift), two Lighthouse wall hangings (one a gift and one for me), Palmateer Point doll quilt, Tulip mini.

5 Wall hangings and Table Toppers:  Blackbird Gathering, White table topper (gift), Green table topper (gift), Spirit of America (gift),  July leftovers.

2017 also saw the completion of a couple of pieced tops:
2 Queen: Charlotte's Baskets and Calendar row-by-row
1 Mini: Crow's Foot

That may not be all of them, but it's all I can come up with for now.  All in all, a pretty productive year for quilting. Thanks for all the times you've stopped by my blog this year, and all your encouragement.  Love to read your comments!  Here's to another year ahead of quilting fun together!

Crow's Foot

Crow's Foot - 21 inches square

On Ringo Lake is coming along, but I never can work on just one quilt project at a time.  Just need to mix it up a little, you know? 

Kathleen Tracy makes such adorable small quilts, and every month she puts out a challenge to sew along on one of her designs.  January 2018 is Crow's Foot from her book Small and Scrappy. 

Looking at her quilt, I decided that the border piece would actually determine the rest of the quilt fabrics.  There was a 14 inch striped piece in my scrap bin that was from some fabric samples gifted to me at least 20 years ago.  Perfect!  Then, time to do some math so that it could ALL be used up.  The main blocks were made a bit larger than Kathleen's pattern to make it all work out. The colors are deep dark blue and a rosy mauve.  Kathleen's small quilt finished at 15.5 inches and mine is 21 inches.

The weather cooperated, so I snapped a quick photo outdoors.  Then, off to sandwich and quilt.  The hand stitching on the binding is all that's left now.  Hopefully it will be my first finish of 2018!

 

Frosty Babies

Frosty Babies wall hanging

Last Christmas (2016) I made four seasons wall hangings for our son & DIL at Christmas.  The Winter design was a Christmas candle.  Lovely, but it went out of season pretty quickly, because January, February and March are clearly still WINTER here in Minnesota!

So, my plan for this Christmas was to make another winter wall hanging for their kitchen that would last through the winter months.  I found the perfect pattern at our annual Police Dept. book sale last June.  Frosty Babies, by Brandywine Design, with adorable applique snowmen!

I picked out three of my favorites and turned them into a great winter wall hanging.  Wish I could have put one more solid border around the whole thing so that the 9-patches didn't disappear into the binding, but it would have made the wall hanging too wide. 

There was enough Let it Snow fabric (which I used as backing) to make four matching placemats too!

Ordinary Green

table topper about 18x22

The second small quilt for our DIL this Christmas was green.  Green is the liturgical color for "Ordinary time" which is mostly the weeks during the summer and fall, but also a couple weeks between the end of the Christmas season and Ash Wednesday.

One set of four blocks remained from the fabric I used to make our DD a table runner/wall hanging this past spring.   There's more about it here.  

The border design is from Fall Splendor by Julie Weaver that I found in a book called "Quilts With Unique Borders" from Annie's Quilting.