NYE Mystery from Fabricholics

Four patch parade through the machine. I really like making these pieces. Power piecing...no stopping and starting! I bought a 1/4" foot and then ripped the metal guide off ( one came with my machine so I did not alter that one). I love this foot. Gives an accurate 1/4" seam allowance.

I have to keep the kitties from "skating" on them.

I have two of these plastic trays. They are great for moving pieces from the cutting table to the sewing machine. In the background you can see some of my bolts of fabric. I am a true fabricholic.

MaggieMay is sure that I have plenty of room to do my sliver trimming. I found the little brush and dustpan at a dollar store. It works great to sweep my cuttings. And then I brush MaggieMay with it. She loves helping!

Bird Sanctuary Quilt

I have all the machine quilting done on this small quilt. I want it to lay on my machine table to help with the kitties toenail marks and the stray furs that accumulate on/in my sewing area table.

I simply machine quilted with a sage green thread all the straight lines on the design. I am hand quilting all the leaves and the birds. I started this on Christmas morning and was hand quilting by noon the same day. I am in love with the leaves on this. After hand quilting a couple of the leaves I love the effect of all the veins in the leaves. When this is done I will take another picture...closeup.

My Pearl...my precious Pearl. Her nose is so out of place because of MaggieMay's arrival. Pearl was the "baby" in the house. I got her when I first was on sick leave and we were so very close. Then I worked until I retired. So she was so dependent on me for her "human contact". She resents MaggieMay so much. I go out of my way to spend quality time with her. She is coming around slowly but her heart is broken. She still loves me so much. We will get back to where we were. I will not give up on her.

MaggieMay has to help with every project!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NYE Mystery from Fabricholics

This is the group of fabric I have chosen for the NYE quilt. The focus fabric is a really large floral that I totally love. The dark is a chocolate brown batik I guess I have been saving for my next life (ha!) and the medium I have been saving for the same reason. The background is Ecology Cloth. I heard great things about it on the internet so I bought a whole bolt. I have been working with it and love the feel of it.

Here is the beginning of the pre-sewing before the actual clues begin. I made 320 HST in the BG/medium and 160 HST in medium/dark. Yikes! That is 480 HST's!!!!! And they are all done!

I use the sandpaper (glued into a file folder) as an underlay to draw the lines on my squares. There is no shifting with this method. I use the ruler to lift the finished square off the sandpaper. It can ruin your nail tips if you use your fingernails.

Final sliver trimming to make the unit measure 2 1/2" unfinished size.

480 of these beauties!

Friday night furniture moved

I moved out my recliner that I use for hand work to an inside wall. (Will be much warmer though I lose my good view of the birdfeeders) I moved a desk to the right of my machine area. It made the work area into a large "U" shape and I totally love it. MaggieMay approves too.

I was able to move in my plastic roller bins of threads. Now they are so handy. I am planning on using it as an ironing station while piecing. I have a small watt iron and a Fons & Porter ironing mat. I have not tried this set-up yet with the iron, but I sewed all day and it feels "right". You know what I mean!

I am now drinking a glass of fine wine and eating pretzels, olives and two kinds of yummy cheese. Yes...this will be my supper.

BTW...our temps outside were in the 60's. We opened up the house and cleaned and dusted. Best way to move furniture. Felt like Spring here, at least for a few hours. The ice is all gone and the snow is melted. We had lightning and thunderstorms of ice this morning then it warmed up to be stormy and warm.

more ice storm pictures

This is our front yard tree. In the past it has dropped limbs on my parked truck during the summertime storms. We had it trimmed out. Now with this storm is has dropped lots of big limbs and tons of ice chips and tiny branches. When they hit the front windows the cats go nuts!

My poor big spruce trees. When we planted them they were only 5 feet high. I sure hope they make it.

These two shrubs are at our front door. The poor things are leaning so bad.

Hubby had to work cutting up trees today. It is only 6 degrees and there are wind chills of -25! We are expected to receive more snow and ice tomorrow. Yikes!

Today I did 4 loads of laundry. I did them one at a time for fear the power would go out. It took all day but now the laundry is done and the dishes are washed. We kept the house warm with a big pot of chicken broth cooking. Then I made chicken and noodles. Yummy!

A friend of mine who has a Persian cattery is still without power. She has many little kittens. They are using a propane heater to keep one room warm for them. Poor kitties.

Ice storm pictures

These pics were taken a couple hours apart. The ice grew...almost doubled! There are still 50,000 Fort Wayne residents without power! We were so lucky. Our power was only out about 14 hours.

More cat beds

These were made after hubby was called in at 12:30 a.m. to begin his fight of the ice storm. I told him I would stay up and suffer the sleep loss with him. At 7:00 a.m. we lost our power! I had just unplugged the sewing machine as I was worried about power surges. I am so glad I had all my Christmas sewing done. These were bonus gifts!

Cat bed

Fabric is much more pastel than this picture shows. This is my own design. It matches one of the quilts I am giving for a Christmas present.

The bed is cat cozy...like a big cup...and machine wash and dry....so they always stay fur free!

Coasters and cats

This pic was taken on Halloween night. MaggieMay and Bess were both on the stool watching for trick or treaters. Bess is the dark one closest to the door.

I found this pattern on the internet so I made 17 sets of 4 for my guild's Christmas party. They were used as table decorations then given away.

Guild mystery block

This is the first mystery since I joined the guild "Hoosiers Favorite Quilters"

The large triangle fabric is actually a border fabric. So, I plan on using it as the border and will miter the corners.

MaggieMay helps the quilting process

This is a pic of an outside male cat that has adopted our house. He is a terror on screens! And the girls in here hate him. Lots of hissing and growling.

Maggie helping...she says "I am not in your way"

I am too beautiful to not take a picture while my human is sewing.

MaggieMay helping yesterday with a commissioned quilt for a Persian breeder named Dino.

Virginia Bound assembled

I plan on making another in a super king size for my own bed. The quilt on my bed was made so long ago it is falling apart. Sad when a quilter has a "crappy first quilt" on her own bed!

The first 4 quarters. I fell in love with this piecing process. Thanks Bonnie!

At the very beginning. I used the Kabnet wax paper to make all the foundation blocks.

Pink Smokey Mountain Stars quilted!

This quilt has been made for my lost Granddaughter Tarrah. She was given up for adoption in 1989. And found in October 2008. I cannot begin to tell you all how pleased I am.

So, I had to make her a very special quilt. She loves pinks, polka-dots,butterflies and cats. I got them all in this quilt. And I backed it with "Minkee" in a pink/brown print.

On the machine for quilting. What you cannot see is MaggieMay lying at the end just out of the way.

I love all the pinks here. Now I want to make myself one in browns. I thought the assembly was tricky but it came out great! I numbered each set of five rows and also gave them letters. Kept me straight.

Just beginning assembly. I kept it very organized. The corner triangles were from a different set of fabrics so there were no repeats.

Strip Twist complete

I finished this Strip Twist yesterday. It measures 56X72. A perfect size for a 7 year old. It is ready for quilting. I need to decide on a backing fabric. Anna loves orange and pink together so I may use an orange fabric for the backing. Kudos to Bonnie Hunter, creator of www.quiltville.com , for giving us this great pattern.

Chipmunk with watermelon

This chipmunk raids the feeder day after day. I enjoy it's antics. The cats do not scare it at all. So I gave it a piece of watermelon. Stopped all the seed storing and enjoyed a cool lick of the watermelon most of the afternoon.
No matter where I move that little topper a cat finds it. Macy is saying "Don't move me!"
Here is one of Bonnie's patterns called Strip Twist. I made it all in one marathon sewing session. All I need to do is add a small border strip and then a floral border to finish. I will keep you all posted. Anna's BD is not until August. I am way early!

Anna and her gift for her Mommy

Can you see Macy supervising? She loves children. This is her Mommy's birthday present she is working on. She did a great job of decorating the sleepshirt.

OC quilts back from the longarmer

OC all done and on the bed. Lisa Olinger quilted this quilt on her APQS. She does such a beautiful job. And she really liked the pattern. I turned her on to Bonnie Hunter's site.

My Brick Road to Africa. Almost too beautiful to use. I may hang it on a wall.
This closeup really shows off the quilting Lisa Olinger did on this quilt.
My Chocolate Crush. Lisa Olinger wants to call it Raspberry Cordial. She really liked it.

Closeup of quilting: roses and leaves. Beautiful!

9 patches for block exchange

These are what were mailed to the hostess for the scrappy 9-patch exchange.

testing wool batting

I used a small pice of wool batting and the leftover squares from the last two quilts. I made this small cat sized topper to test the woool batting. I washed it in warm water and dried it on high in the dryer. The batting behaved great. And as you can see below the cats all love this little topper.
This is Bess. Her fur is so long it makes her look much larger than she is. She is a petite kitty.
The battle over who will get to nap on the topper next. Pearl and Macy always compete.
Pearl won this time. Boy! She is really deep asleep.