Found another quilt challenge.  This one is from Julie Bagamary, and it’s called More Blessed To Give.  She is challenging everyone to make one item a week to donate.  The best part about this one is that you don’t have to be a quilter.  No matter what you do, whether it’s knitting hats or crocheting blankets, or even making soap or jewelry, make one item a week to donate to a good cause.

Since I’ve been on a roll lately as far as stashbusting goes, I thought I would look for a local group here in the Upper Peninsula that might be able to use some quilts.  And I found the Marquette Women’s Center, a shelter for domestic violence victims.  I sent them an email this morning, and hope to hear back from them next week as to what size quilts would be best for them.  I have enough blocks on hand for probably two more lap or crib-sized quilts, so I can have a couple ready pretty quick.

I’ve  been working away on my Rail Fence quilt.  It may have looked easy, but I’ve had more trouble with this particular scrap quilt than I’ve had with any project in a long time.  Do you think I could keep my pattern straight?  Noooo-oooo.  I swear, I sewed things together backwards and upside-down, and I still think there’s a mistake in it someplace.

I pieced together a batting from leftover pieces that have been banging around in my closet forever.  That was a challenge, but I finally got it done.  Then when I started the machine quilting, I messed it up, and wound up having to pick out two LONG rows of stitches, diagonally across a 50″ by 60″ quilt!  Sigh.  At least they were long stitches.  I messed up on my second try, too, but this time I had enough sense to stop before I got too far.  More stitches to pick out.

The third time was the charm!  I think I may actually finish the quilting this morning, but I don’t want to be too sure of myself!  If I manage to finish it, then I’ll get a backing and batting together for my Barn Dance quilt, so I can get that one done as well.

Andrew is still in TN.  Now they’ve had an ice/snow storm down there.  Hope they still have power.  I haven’t heard from him since yesterday, so if he doesn’t call me, I’ll give him a buzz later to see how things are going there.

It’s been COLD here, in the single digits during the days, below zero at night.  I think the temperature might have struggled up to 11 degrees yesterday.  Since I was out of milk, bread, and half-and-half (essential to life around here), I got brave and bundled up in my long underwear and down coat (a Goodwill purchase in MN) and walked up to the store.  I have to say that the right clothes do make a difference!  The only part of me that got cold was my nose, and I pulled my scarf up to protect my face.

Still no camera, so I’ll close with this picture of Molly.  She loves to sit on the table and watch birds and squirrels out the back window.  She’s been a lot of company for me this week, although she thinks I should spend more time playing with her, and less time quilting!

The big news for today is that Brody made his appearance yesterday afternoon!  Sorry, don’t know what time he was born, but mommy and baby are both doing great.  Andrew had hoped to be there in time for the birth, but the trip took longer than he expected, and he wound up staying over in a motel north of Indianapolis.  I talked him into it, since I could tell how tired he was when he called from the road on Tuesday night.

And the quilts I sent along were a big success.  Nora was happily playing on hers when Andrew left for the hospital, and Elise, Brody’s two-year-old big sister, wrapped herself up in Brody’s quilt and in general acted cute.  So all the work last weekend to get those two quilts done was more than worth it!  I love knowing that they’ll be well used.

Can’t send any pictures of what I’m working on, since the camera is in TN!  But I’ve been working on a rail fence quilt.  Basically I sewed a dark and a light 2-1/2″ strip together, and cut them into 4-1/2″ squares.  Then I laid them out, alternating them, so that the dark/light was horizontal in the first block, and vertical in the second.  It’s pretty fast and easy.  I should finish piecing it this morning.  That will give me two more quilts to machine quilt, so I’ll work on coming up with backings for both quilts this afternoon.  Hopefully I’ll get them both quilted in the next couple of days.  After a trip though the washer and dryer, they’ll be on their way to the Hopes and Dreams ALS Quilt Challenge.

I’ve been looking through a couple of library books, Reverse Applique With No Brakez, by Jan Mullen, and Nature’s Studio, by Joan Colvin.  I’m intrigued with the idea of reverse applique, and I want to do something with it for my next AAQI quilt.  Jude Hill has some amazing ideas for reverse applique on her blog, what if.  So all these ideas are spinning around in my head right now…

I’ve also ordered some books interlibrary loan.  I can do it all online, which is very cool.  I have the original Liberated Quiltmaking and Liberated String Quilts, both by Gwen Marston,  and Fusing Fun! Fast Fearless Art Quilts, by Laura Wasilowski, on the way.  Don’t know when they’ll turn up since they’re all coming from libraries downstate, but that’s part of the fun.  It’ll be like Christmas when they do show up!

I’ll close with this video.  Nellie from Nellie’s Needles sent it to me cuz I have a kitty. It was so cute I just had to share it with you!  The scratched up bedframe and the kitty toys scattered hither and yon look a lot like it does around here!

While the Liberated Quilters have been having their virtual quilting  retreat yesterday and today, my own private retreat took  place over the weekend.  And it will continue this week, since my husband is headed for TN today.

I spent Saturday and Sunday basting and quilting and binding, and I have TWO quilts to show for it!  Here’s a picture of Nora’s big girl quilt.  I had to hang it sideways on the clothesline to keep it out of the snow.  (How many people do you know who wear snowshoes while taking pictures of their quilts?)  You can click on it for a close-up.

I wound up quilting it in a diagonal grid.  Since time was of the essence, I needed to something fast, and this worked out well.

Here’s the quilt for Andrew’s new grandson, whose name will be Brody.  I quilted it in a diagonal grid, too.  Not real original, but it looks good, and it’s finished!  This UFO had been banging around in my closet for a couple of years now, so I’m happy to have it done and on its way to its new home!

Andrew will be heading out shortly.  We’ve were concerned about the big snowstorm, but we think we have a route planned that misses most of it.  At least we put new tires on the truck last week, so that should help him if he does hit a lot of snow someplace.

Brody will hopefully be born tomorrow.  They’re inducing Jenny in the morning.  She wanted them to wait until Andrew was there, so that’s why he’s leaving today, even though the weather isn’t the best, instead of waiting til tomorrow.  So be sending good thoughts and wishes Jenny’s way!  And also for Andrew to have a safe trip.  (He has ankylosing spondylitis, and is a chronic pain patient, so these long trips are hard on him.)

My hubby will be gone for a week, so I intend to quilt my brains out!  The weather has turned off COLD, so I probably won’t be taking any real long hikes this week, unless I’m feeling especially brave.  The extent of my travels will probably be to walk up to the neighborhood grocery store for milk.  I stocked up on cat food and frozen dinners yesterday, so Molly and I are ready for our girls’ week together.

I want to quilt my Barn Dancing quilt, and get going on some more stashbusting quilts.  You’ll be happy to know that I actually went into a fabric store yesterday and didn’t buy anything but a quilt batting and a needle threader!  I practically had to cover my eyes and not look at anything in the store while I made a beeline to the batting area.  But I did it!  And I had a 30% off coupon, which made it even better!

Molly was watching me out the window yesterday as I was taking pictures of the quilts.  She looked so cute that I couldn’t resist taking this picture!  Kinda makes up for when she gets up on the table and knocks everything in the floor!

Like most quilters, I have an amazing stash.  I’ve taken a vow not to buy any more material until I can make an appreciable dent in what I already have.  This was put to the test with a quilt I’m making for my step-granddaughter, Nora.

I never got around to making a baby quilt for Nora when she was born a year ago.  Since she’s 13 months old already, Granny decided to make her a  big-girl quilt instead.

I already had a bunch of four-patch units I’d made up using the leaders and enders technique from Quiltville.  I went through my stash of pinks (which wasn’t huge to start with; I’m not a pink person!), and cut them up into 4-1/2 inch squares.  I had to piece some of them!

And here’s the result!  It came out really cute.  I made it bigger, about 51″ by 60″ so Nora will be able to use it for quite a while before outgrowing it.  All the pinks really work well together with the scrappy four-patches.  It’s a really girly-girl quilt!

I cut extra pink squares because I had planned to sew them together for the backing, but I’ve changed my mind on this.  I’m racing the stork to finish this quilt, along with another one, so that Andrew can take them with him when he goes to TN to see his new grandson (when he’s born).  So I think I’ll find a bigger piece of material in my stash to use as a backing instead to save time.

The leftover pink squares will find a home in another quilt, probably a baby quilt to donate.  And I’ve still got plenty of the four-patch units left for another quilt, probably a second one for the Hopes and Dreams Quilt Challenge for ALS.

The weather has been quite pleasant lately, cold but sunny, so I’ve been getting out for walks in the afternoons.  When you sit in front of a sewing machine for hours, it’s good to get out for some exercise!

It was warm enough to walk along the beach yesterday, which is my favorite walk!

Here are some little animal tracks I found in the snow by the Coast Guard station.  I found the little hole where this critter lives,  and I followed his tracks as he meandered through the pine trees.  The little footprints cross here.  I think these were from a second critter, since they came from a different direction.  A friend or relative perhaps?  This made me think of a superhighway in the woods!

Well, I need to get busy.  I have to get a backing together, baste this quilt and a baby quilt, and get them machine quilted and bound.  So you know what I’ll be doing for the next couple of days!

Here are the pictures I promised you yesterday of my first AAQI Priority Quilt for the Liberated Quilting Challenge.  I even got out my light box so I could take some nice photos for my records.

It took a while to finish, really a lot longer than it should have.  I was challenged by how to attach the wolf.  I wanted to fuse him down, but do you think I could find my Wonder Under?  I ended up using some very lightweight fusible interfacing on him so he wouldn’t fray.  I wanted the fraying on the background strips, but not on him.

I blanket stitched around the wolf , using dark gray embroidery floss, and then used light gray floss in an outline stitch to make him stand out from the background a little more.

I’m pretty happy with how it came out.  I really like the wolf image.  I think he’s going to show up again in some future quilts.

I even pieced the back.  I need to register it, but I”m going to wait til I have a couple more done and register them all at once.  I already have an idea for the next one!

And I finished the “Barn Dance” quilt top this morning!  Well, not quite.  I managed to sew the top border on upside down!  I’ll have to pull it off and sew it down again in the morning.  Meant to do it this afternoon, but I forgot about it til I saw the picture!

“Barn Dance” will be donated to the Hopes and Dreams Challenge for ALS when I get it quilted.

This baby quilt has been banging around in my closet for a couple of years now.  I made it from directions in a nine-patch book by Blanche Young.  I don’t have the book anymore, and I can’t remember which book it was either!  It has a backing and batting.  All it needs is quilting, which I never did, for some reason.  So it’s in the line-up now.  My step-daughter and her hubby are going to have a baby boy soon, so it will go to her when it’s done.

I never did make a baby quilt for my step-son and his wife when their daughter was born a year ago.  So I’m going to use the little four-patches I made yesterday to make a big-girl quilt for Nora, since she’s already going on 13 months!  I spent this afternoon cutting out pink squares to go with them.  I’ll put the four-patches on point, and alternate them with the pink squares.

When I get Nora’s quilt top done, I’ll have three tops to machine quilt.  I’ll just line them up assembly line fashion, and straight line quilt them, using the tutorial provided by Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

Once again, I spent the day working on quilts, sewing in the morning, and getting my next project organized and set up.  It was overcast and cold with snow on and off all day, so it was a great day for quilting!

Looks like our January thaw might be over for a bit.  But I sure enjoyed it  while it lasted!  Here are a few pictures from my walks along the Lake Superior beach last weekend.

It was cloudy and overcast today, so I stayed in and sewed all day!

The big news is that I finished “Winter Journey,” my first Liberated Challenge Quilt!  By the time I finished the binding this afternoon, I didn’t feel like messing around with the camera.  Besides, I want to get out my light box and get some good photos, so I’ll do that in the morning.  I will tell you it came out really cool.  There will be pix tomorrow!

Besides sewing loads of four-patches, I also finished piecing the borders for my barn-raising quilt, which I’m going to call Barn Dance.  I’ll get the borders sewed on tomorrow, and then that top will be ready for quilting.  Pix will follow!

So you can see I’ve been a busy little girl!  I’ve been sewing my heart out, and having a blast!

Is there such a thing as the perfect quilt?  Do you drive yourself nuts trying to make sure all your seams match?  Do you feel like the Quilt Police are looking disapprovingly over your shoulder as you work?  If so, you should read  “Perfection” from The House of Krom.

I have to say that the author hits the nail on the head.  I’ve spent so much time obsessing over trying to make all my quilts perfect.  But the truth is, that no matter how carefully I cut and sew and press, I STILL can’t get all my seams to match!  I actually stopped quilting for a while, out of frustration.  The joy was gone.

Now I’m approaching my quilting differently.  I want to enjoy the process, not drive myself crazy.  I guess that’s what liberated quilting is all about!  It’s not just about the wonky stars and creative piecing, as fun as all that is.  It’s really a mindshift.

Take a good look at the picture on the right.  Click on it to make it bigger, and you’ll see that the seams on the patchwork are offset by at least a good quarter-inch.  I suspect this has something to do with the fact that I cut the patchwork squares in half, and then sewed them to the brown triangles.

No matter what I did, these seams were NEVER going to match!

A year ago, I would have given up in total dismay.  But now?  Well, if they don’t line up, they don’t line up.  And you know what?  From a distance, you can’t even tell.

You can see that not every seam in my border matches either!  And I didn’t spend a lot of time pinning the daylights out of it, trying to make those seams line up.  All I did was to press the seams going one way on one pieced strip, and going the opposite way on the other one.  I put my walking foot on, lined everything up as best I could, and had at it.  Some seams match, some don’t.  And guess what?  From a distance, you can’t tell!

And my quilt has found a home.  When it’s done, I’m going to donate it to the Hopes and Dreams Quilt Challenge for ALS.  This challenge is open to any quilter who wants to donate a quilt.  The quilt should be at least 35 by 44 inches, and bed-sized quilts are even better.  The quilts will be given to people with ALS, and some will be auctioned, raffled off, or displayed to raise money for ALS research.  The challenge is open until July 31, 2010.

Anyone who donate a quilt will be entered into a drawing to win prizes provided by a wide range of sponsors.

This sounds like a win-win situation to me!  You can donate as many quilts as you want.  I already have another one about halfway pieced using Bonnie Hunter’s leaders and enders technique.  I’ll donate that one, too.  I love to make quilts, but you can only use so many of them, so it’s nice to find another place that can use them.

And it’s even nicer to use up all that fabric that has been sitting around here for years!  As Clare at Dordogne Quilter says, “Finished is better than perfect!”  I love it!

PS:  Brenda at Scraps and Strings has directions for making utility quilts to donate to the Mennonite Central Committee.  It’s pretty warm in Haiti, but I would guess those folks will need blankets at night.

Woo hoo!  Got a new Knit Picks catalog in the mail yesterday.  I have a LIFETIME supply of yarn, especially sock yarn, but, oh, it’s so much fun to look!  And this is the perfect catalog for a gray and white winter season, just full of lively colors and patterns and gorgeous yarn…no, will NOT buy more yarn…

I sewed my barn-raising quilt together yesterday, too.  It’s about 37″ by 42″, which I think is a bit skimpy for a lap quilt, so I will be adding a border.  I want to use up the last four blocks in the corners, which means the borders will be about five inches wide.  That should make a nice size small quilt.

I’m considering how to do the borders.  I have LOTS of 1-1/2 inch strips, so I was going to seam a bunch together, and just do strips.  But now I’m wondering about doing it in little squares, to match the blocks.  I would use the Scrappy Trips Around The World directions from Bonnie Hunter’s Quiltville.  This is how I made the blocks to start with, but my scrap quilt sure didn’t look as good as the ones on her site!

It would take longer to do that, but the idea of slow cloth is calling me.  Why am I always in such a rush to finish stuff?  I’m learning to slow down and let the quilt lead me where it wants to go, instead of trying to force it to conform to an idea in my head.

I stopped quilting for a long time because it was such a struggle.  I couldn’t get my seams to line up nicely, projects came out awful, sewing just wasn’t fun any more.  I realize now it’s because I was trying to control the process too much.  I had the idea that the more I controlled things, the better my quilts would be.  But the paradox is that the more I let go, the more I find enjoyment in the process, and the better my work is.

On a different topic, we’re in the midst of the fabled January thaw.  It was actually above freezing yesterday, and the sun was out.  In the afternoon, I finished scooping mushy snow out of the end of the driveway and took off for a walk!  I love to walk, and I walk up the beach near my house nearly every day when the weather is nice.  It’s hard to motivate myself when an arctic gale is blowing, though, so my walking tapers off during the winter months.  It’s nice to get out when the opportunity presents itself!

Here are a few pictures from my walk.  Click on the image to make it bigger, and click on the magnifying glass icon when it appears to make it bigger yet!  Enjoy!

You may remember my post about my quilting disaster.  Well, the Quilt From Hell is no longer from hell!  In fact, now I love it!

Yesterday I squared up my blocks and trimmed them so that they’re the same size.  They finished at five-and-three-quarters inches, so will sew up to five-and-a-quarter.  It will finish up as a lap quilt, and I’ll have four blocks left over.  Who knows what they’ll end up in?

In the afternoon, I laid them out in the floor, and tried some different configurations.

The barn-raising set was the one that I liked the best.  The quilt is eight blocks tall, by seven blocks wide, so there’s no way to really center it, which I didn’t want to do anyway.  I like the off-center look.  It has a lot more visual interest.

So today I hope to get it sewed together.  I was raring to go yesterday, but my driveway desperately needed to be shoveled!  Real life always calls, doesn’t it?  But there may be a break in the snow for a few days, as the forecast is calling for highs in the 30′s through the weekend, with maybe even some sun peeking out.  Warm enough to enjoy a few walks, too!  I feel like I’ve been cooped up in the house forever!

On the baby quilt front:  I mailed Sarah’s quilt out last Friday.  I called and let her know it was on the way, and extracted a promise that she would call me before she opened it so I could hear her reaction.  The Post Office came through, and the quilt arrived safely yesterday.  She had just gotten back from shopping, and had to put away the cold stuff before she could call me!  I praised her for her self-restraint.

She loved it!  Of course I knew she would, but it’s always great to hear it.  The older boys were at school, but Kieran, who is two, loved it, too.  He saw it, and said, “ooooh, kitties!”  Sarah’s telling him that it’s for the new baby, so hopefully he won’t glom onto it!  He has his own kitty “kilt” from Granny that I made for him when he was born.  Sarah’s probably going to hang this one on the wall above the changing table so they can enjoy it until the new baby comes.

In spite of the snow shoveling, I managed to do some more handquilting on my AAQI Challenge Quilt, too.  I was afraid my hands would be too tired, but such was not the case.  I made myself quit after an hour or so, which was hard.  But the quilting is nearly done now, and I should finish it tonight.  Then I just need to do the wolf applique, and bind it, along with the hanging corners.  Can’t wait to finish it so I can get started on the next one!  I have ideas for a couple more.

I’ll finish up today with a picture of Molly.  She was watching me lay my quilt blocks out in the floor yesterday afternoon, and looked so cute sitting on her stool that I couldn’t resist snapping her picture.  She sat next to me on that stool while I was sitting at the ironing board trimming quilt blocks yesterday morning.

How sweet, you say?  Don’t be fooled.  She wanted me to feed her, and was trying to get me to give in and do it by patting me on the arm with her paw.  When that didn’t work, she resorted to knocking things in the floor.  But I held firm, and made her wait til I was done.  Life is so hard for a cat!

When you live in the Upper Peninsula, you’d better enjoy winter, or you’re in for a long, hard slog.  As the saying goes, we have ten months of winter, and two months of rough sledding!  Actually that’s not quite true.  Winter is about six months long here, usually starting in November, and extending into early April.  But the summers, short and fleeting though they are, make getting through the long winters well worth it.

Andrew wanted to go fishing Saturday afternoon, and he invited me to go along to go snowshoeing.  We finally had some sun, the first sunny day in well over a week.

Fishing in the winter, you say?  Oh yeah.  Like I say, you gotta make the most of winter around here!  Apparently the Chocolay River, south of Marquette, is a hotspot for steelhead (rainbow trout that live in the Great Lakes and come back to their native rivers to spawn)  and even salmon.

Here’s Andrew, making a cast.  He did get a nibble from a big steelhead, but wasn’t able to land it.  Apparently they’re hard to catch.  Of course, the fishermen use little tiny hooks, which I don’t understand.  Seem like you could catch a big fish easier with a bigger hook, but then I’m not a fisherman!

While Andrew was fishing, I strapped on my snowshoes and wandered around in the woods.  It was cold, but I was bundled up, and I stayed warm as long as I kept moving.

I took several pictures of coyote tracks weaving through the woods.  I want to figure out how to use the tracks in a quilt design.

I liked the way the sun was shining through the trees, backlighting them.  The sun is so low in the sky this time of year that it looks like it’s much later in the day than it really is.

These icy beads hanging off a branch in the river caught my eye as I was walking along the river. The sun was already too low to light them up anymore, but it’s a neat picture anyway. Another idea for a quilt design?

I’ve had to take a break from working on my AAQI Challenge Quilt. I enjoyed the handquilting so much the other day that I definitely overdid it! I have carpel tunnel syndrome, and it usually doesn’t bother me if I’m careful.

But I cheerfully threw caution to the winds last week, and I’ve been paying for it with numb hands at night, and achiness in my wrists and hands. It’s getting better now, though, so maybe I can work on it a bit tonight. There’s not much to do to finish it, but I do need to pace myself.

I had cut the blocks from the Quilt from Hell in half last week. Yesterday I cut my brown squares. Using the technique you use when sewing lots of half-square triangles,  I sewed two triangles to each square, so I could avoid stretching the bias. Then I cut the squares in half and pressed them open.

Today I’ll trim the blocks so they’re all the same size, and square them up. Then the fun starts as I try out different arrangements for sewing them together. The blocks will end up being about six inches, which means they’ll finish at about five-and-a-half. Small blocks, but I have sixty of them. It will be interesting to see what I wind up with!