Monthly post-for May

I think Gobi is here to stay.  We tried to take him to my mother's for weekend visitation and he was a bad boy.  :^(  My mother really misses him and he really loves her, but her condo is just too small and she is just not in good enough health.  He is a high energy boy who loves to run and jump.  There is no room for that in her tiny yard.  She is also not very good with taking him outside, so her house was too  unsanitary for him to live there.  Here he does great!  We got a wireless electric fence and Gobi has it all figured out.  We were hoping to trick him by putting up flags where we didn't want him to go-mainly to the front of the property, but he found out they were not real pretty quickly.  He loves being outside chasing bunnies, balls and birds.  My biggest concern is what will  happen when the baby birds leave their nests.  I am going to be vigilant and try to prevent any disasters.

I just added this picture to the Pets on Quilts show.

Here is my latest quilt finish.  It is an older Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Carolina Christmas, that I posted about previously.  It just didn't want to get finished.  I had another border on it and didn't like it.  I took the border off, took the top apart to see how I would like it with sashing.  I ended up liking it better without the sashing, so finally got around to putting it back together, adding Bonnie's pieced border, which was much nicer than mine, and started to quilt it.  I found one area that I hadn't sewn completely so that got hand sewn while on the frame.  Then my helper from above-Gobi-decided he was going to play with the batting while the quilt was on the frame.  

I was quilting it from one side and he was doing his thing on the other side.   There were a total of  two holes and the bottom piece was torn out.  I cut some batting and patched them and can't tell where the holes were now that the quilt is all quilted.  The final minor disaster was that I ran out of the thread I was quilting with.  I was using a pink variegated thread.  For about 1 square foot the thread isn't pink.  It isn't very noticeable.  

I decided to sew the binding on by hand.  It has been a long time since I did anything but machine binding.  I didn't mind the process like I used to, but I didn't love it either.

 Here are a couple of pictures of the flowers in my yard.  These are in the front of the house and I can see them while I am working.  My desk faces the front windows, and if I look between the computer monitors I can see the taller ones.  These are coreopsis, Johnny Jump ups and either Dawn or Sunset or something like that coneflower.  I love the coloring of the coneflower.  It is a little more orangish (made up work?) than the picture shows.

One more flower picture.  Here is the bouquet that my son surprised me with for Mother's day.  It was absolutely beautiful and lasted a long time, because they had a lot of buds in the arrangement.

Finally some recent photos of some of the grands.

Oliver-4

Elijah 5

Madison-2

Kamille-6

Ryleigh-4

Braydon-3

The two oldest grands-Hayley and Kole-didn't get their pics taken.  Maybe next time!

Goodbye until next time!

Recent finishes

 I missed my little quilt club in March.  They were working on applique and DSM quilting.  They were doing machine applique, but I have wanted to try my hand at needle turned applique.  I got the pattern to make the table runners the club made and tried to find some needle turned applique tutorials and you tube videos online.  I found a couple and tried three or four different techniques.  It was kind of hard to figure out how to do inside curves.  I just winged it.  I would really like to find someone to teach me how to do this.  I don't usually like hand sewing, but found this relaxing.  I surprised myself!  I think they turned out pretty nice.  I tried my hand at machine quilting with my DSM too.  The blue one has stippling in the center around the applique and cross hatching on the borders.  I did not enjoy doing that.  The red ones have outlines and a little bit of twirls done with my DSM in the center.  Then I loaded them on my frame and did large swirls on the borders.  I enjoyed that process much better.  One is for my mother for Mother's Day, one is for my daughter who is a wonderful mother.  I will let her kids give it to her.  The third one is for me!

Here is a quilt that I "designed" on EQ7 for a friend to give to her daughter as a wedding gift.  I guess I designed it because I chose the blocks and border from the EQ7 library and put it together.  Her daughter likes country colors and decorating.   This took longer to make using EQ7 because the block sizes didn't work from EQ7.  The seams didn't match up, so I had to make a bunch of mock blocks until I got the size right.

This is the first quilt that I pieced the back.  I used all of the left over fabrics in the back.  It made for an interesting back.  I am looking forward to the bride's reaction when she gets the quilt.  You never know how someone else is going to like something.

And here is another little finish.  A friend had saved all the scarves from her dog, who had died.  She now has new puppies and wanted some mats made for them out of the scarves.  I tried to make them reversible and seasonal.  They were very simple and more functional than anything else.

Nala

I lost my Nala yesterday.  She was with me for 17 years.  Nala was the sweetest little dog I have ever met.  She liked to visit the neighbors when she was just a little bit younger.  Over the last year or two she lost most of her vision and hearing.  As you can see in the pictures, she wore diapers the last year of her life.  She adapted well to all of this, but the last few days she became pretty week and had trouble standing and eating was becoming a challenge to her.  The vet said it was time and she died in my arms.  RIP sweet Nala.

Lunch totes

I used  Ayumi's (from Pink Penguin ) Lunch Tote tutorial to make a lunch bag for my granddaughter's birthday. She is going to be 10---going on 30.  I first made the cute one with bugs, but then thinking of her age, thought she would prefer one a little bit older looking, but still looking like it is for a kid.  I found this cute peace sign material and think maybe she will like it better.  I think they are both adorable.

I tweaked the tutorial a little bit.  I added a pocket to the front of the bag.  I also used Insul-Brite and fusible fleece.  The tutorial is very well written.  I had to tweak the sizes of the lining because of the extra insulation I added. 

Mug Rugs

I needed to make some more adjustments on my new Featherweight before I could really use it.  I had trouble with the belt slipping and then my needle started to hit the needle plate.  After I made these adjustments, I wanted to see how it sewed.  It is a peppy little machine.  Peppier, I think, than my others.  I made these two little mug rugs with it.  I work remotely so have little contact with the other people in my department.  I decided to make some of them mug rugs.  They aren't quilters, so I am sure I will have some explaining to do when they receive them.  The women in my little quilt club hadn't heard of mug rugs either.  I spend too much time reading blogs!







Spent the rest of the weekend watching two of my grand kids while their parents went to a marriage retreat through their church.  It was tiring, and I am glad I don't have to do it all the time, but I miss them tonight!

Elijah had soccer practice-he is really enjoying himself.  Madison played with other little girls while their siblings practiced.

Two Terrain quilts

I have been wanting to make a quilt for two girls I work with to raffle for their teams to raise money for cancer.  Both are cancer survivors.  I work remotely and haven't been able to contribute anything to them, and thought this may be a fun project for all of us.

A friend asked me to make a quilt for her team to raffle for cancer.  I actually made this one first.  I wanted to use bright colors to represent all the cancers.  This one is Cross Terrain from the Moda Bake Shop.  I added another border just to make it a little bit larger.  Both quilts have mostly Terrain in them.  I bought the Terrain for myself for a Christmas present.  I saved a little of it to make myself a quilt.  I really love that fabric!

Two more finishes for this year.  I am pretty pleased with my progress.

Valentine's Day Early

My husband and I don't fuss too much with holiday presents.  We usually like to spend time together by going out to eat, watching a movie, walking around a flea market, etc.  He really surprised me by buying me a nice little camera for Christmas.  I love that.  Then he surprised me by buying this little beauty for me:

I have a few black ones, but none of this Celery/Cream colored one.  It was frozen up and I thought it probably had a thread caught in the bobbin race area.  I took that all apart and it was clean as a whistle.  There was no thread or lint in this machine.  I am pretty sure it was used because the bobbins were in various states of fullness for thread and there was some thread on the spool spindle.
I oiled and greased her to no avail.  My husband helped me force the bobbin race and hand wheel to move, but the machine still wouldn't work under its own power.  I oiled and greased her some more, and with sore hands from all this, I decided to let the oil soak in and try again in the morning.  I was going to bring the big guns down  (hair dryer) if I needed to.
After a little more oiling, the machine was loosened up.  I was now having trouble with tension, skipped stitches, and huge bobbin loops under the fabric.  I had the needle in backwards, which is easy to do with Featherweights!  That helped with the skipped stitches.  More adjustments to the tension and that seems to be straightened out.  They are not quite as perfect as I would like to see, but we are getting there.
I think since I took the bobbin race out, I don't have that lined up as perfectly as it should be.
Part of the deal with DH buying this Celery Featherweight was I would sell one of my black ones to help pay for this.  I just can't do it!  I told him I would sell my Pfaff.  I am going to get that and clean it up and get it ready to sell.

This is a Pfaff Synchromatic 1215 that I never really bonded with.  I think it is a pretty desirable machine, and I have seen it recommended for sail making.  Not sure what it is worth, but I think it will cover the cost of my pretty little Featherweight and make my DH happy.