Monday, June 30, 2008

What I've been doing...

For the past few weeks, I have been extremely ill. I have been wrestling with a cold/flu like illness, mostly involving my respiratory system. Since I was confined to my bed for more than a week, I decided to work on projects that required hand work.


I finished stitching the binding down on this lap quilt. It is my first flannel quilt. I love, love, love it! It is so warm and snuggle-ly. This is one of my UFO's (unfinished objects) done! I am so happy. It has only taken, um, about 5 or 6 years. LOL! I quilt in spurts and have many in different stages of completion or creation.

The colors are a little off because it was very overcast here today. It has a Christmas theme with penguins.


This particular quilt was a first of many things for me. It was a kit that was inherited from cousin-in-law who did not take to quilting as I did. It represents my first flannel pieced quilt, my first non-prewashed quilt, my first free-motion quilting, my first on point setting and my first bias binding! I love the bias binding, but can tell I hate using flannel to do the type of binding I prefer. My corners are not sharp at all. I still need to wash this to get the wonderful wrinkly look quilts have.


Before I got very sick, I was working on this quilt top. I designed this one for my daughter's room. The tye-dye butterfly border print was my inspiration. I used it along with the lavender solid as the valance for her window. We painted her room a few years ago a bright pink with white border around the middle. Her and I then stamped butterflies, ladybugs, dragonflies and flowers in the white stripe, pulling colors from the border fabric. I also made coordinating pillows and pillowcases too. All her furniture is painted white. I also still need to make her bean bag out of white fuzzy fleece. I would also like to purchase some new sheet sets.


Please excuse the wrinkled mess, but I am machine embroidering the antennae for each butterfly. This is the first quilt I have designed myself and almost finished. I made the quilt blocks using my QuiltPro software. They are paper-pieced. I then digitized the antennae in my Embird software to embroider. The background fabric is a white on white print that says, "P.S. I Love You" all over it. All fabric came from stash except the inspiration border print and the lavender solid.


After all my careful calculations and choosing the coordinating wing color fabrics, it is still slightly too short. I need to purchase batting and backing soon so I can get this quilted. I will most likely bind it with the border print. I also cut my borders wrong then stitched them on in reverse order, but oh well, I am calling the mistakes design features.

Also, whilst lying around watching absolutely nothing of interest on T.V. (I do not particularly like television and rarely ever turn it on), I decided to try and finish my counted cross stitch piece. This is another hobby that I have many pieces in different stages of completion. I am almost done with the outlining, then on to cleaning, blocking and framing (professionally). I am a die hard Winnie-the-Pooh fan.



















Happy Sewing

P.S. Please excuse my poor formatting. This is my first time blogging. I am unfamiliar with Blogger, and I must say, it is not easy.

5 comments:

Jodi Nelson said...

Love the quilts! The penguin quilt is awesome! I can't wait to see the butterfly quilt done. Hope you're feeling better. Thanks for stopping by and visiting my blog! Best wishes in blog land too! You'll LOVE it.
~jodi

Anonymous said...

Welcome to blog land. Sorry to hear that you were feeling bad. I too have a cold I can't get rid of.

Great projects. Can't wait to see more.Thanks for visiting my site.

Susan @ Blackberry Creek said...

Sorry to hear of your illness. I pray that you're all better soon. Love your quilts and needlework. And thanks for visiting Blackberry Creek.

AJ said...

Hope you are feeling better!! I'd love to see a pic our your daughter wall...sounds lovely!

Anonymous said...

thanks for your comment on my blog
and I can see, you're as "mad" as me, lol