2014 NewFO Challenge for February

This has been a pretty productive month for me!  My guild has a UFO Challenge going on this year.  We signed up to finish 6 of our UFOs - one every two months.  We numbered our six, and then every other month they choose a number at random & that's the one we're supposed to finish.  These were mine:

My friend Brad brought these 2 tea towels home from the U.K. and asked if I could make him a pillow with them...about 2 years ago!  My original plan was to sew them together & make one pillow, but they weren't the same size.  So I set them aside...and they were lost for a while...then found & lost & found again!  Then, instead of just adding borders onto the smaller one, I decided to go ahead and make 2 pillow covers out of them.  They ended up being almost king-sized bed pillows.  The top one I made the insert for it & it took my whole bag of fluffy stuffing.  For the other one, I took pity on myself & bought a nice, plump, queen-size bed pillow.

Next is this cunning hat I made for my pal Bill's significant birthday.  I couldn't find a pattern that I liked, so I just made it up as I went along.  Unlike the actual Cunning/Jayne hat, no stripes on this one, but I did use 2 yarns at once so it will be nice & toasty for him to wear in the desert while camping & using his new metal detector.

It looks beige to me on my laptop, but it's actually blue & blue-gray yarns.  

You might remember last month, I started a small quilt for Rilo the blanket hog, and then thought I might crochet a bed for her too.  Well, I did it!  When I get the binding on the quilt, I'll send this up along with it.  At first I was going to make something along the lines of a miniature dog or cat bed, with a dip in the front.  But then I googled to find out what size a hedgehog might like & discovered that they like to have a "hiding spot".  And, voila!

I hope Rilo likes it!

I also made a few more happy bowls, but these have lids.  They keep changing as I go along.

This one is fairly small - maybe 2 1/2" X 4".

Then I tried a new technique for starting the sides & I think I like it better.  They seem to sit a bit flatter.

 So that's what I've been up to.

Oh!  I did get a new-to-me painting!

This was painted by my sister, probably in the early 1960s.

My cousins found it while cleaning their late SIL's house & thought I would like to have it.

They were right!

And Barbara at Cat Patches & I both thought that this would make a fun quilt too - so this is a possible future NewFO!!!

Check out more great NewFOs at Cat Patches!

sue

July NewFOs

Here are my July NewFOs!

 

 

My first project is a pillow cover.

I used a partially paper-pieced pattern from Quilter's Cache

called "Bird of Paradise".  Thanks to Marsha Hohn!

 

Here's the front 

 

and the back

When I measured for the back, I decided that 10.5" would give me the 3" overlap I wanted.  So I cut two 10.5" squares...instead of 10.5" by the width of the pillow!

Argh.  But, no worries, I just made a design decision & added a rectangle to each half & voila!

 

 

Now here it is "stuffed":

 

I did have one other problem.  When I printed out the paper-piecing patterns, my printer would NOT print it at the correct scale. I didn't think about that when I made the 4-patches, so they were a bit too big.  Of course, it was an amount between 3/4" & 7/8" inch off, but I did the best I could.

 

Next is another dish mat, using free-piecing with lots of scraps with a terry cloth dish towel on the back.

 

It really does lay flat, honest!
 

 

And finally, I've made some blocks that will eventually be a philanthropy quilt for my quilt guild.

 

I'm using a technique from a video by the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  They used a design by 3 Dudes Quilting in Phoenix, AZ.  They used a Jelly Roll, but my strips are actually 3" instead of 2.5".

 

 

 

To see more July NewFOs,

pop on over to Cat Patches!

 

 

sue

 



April's Craftiness

 

Yay!  I'm linking up to the Linky Party for the

2013 NewFO Challenge!

 

 

I was just in the mood for some wild Flamingos:

 

 

And I've made some more

Happy Bowls!

 

 

My whole house is going to be filled with these if I don't watch out.

 

In May, I'm hoping to get myself back to work on a quilt for myself.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!

 

You can see lots more NewFOs -

just click on over to Cat Patches.

 

 

 

sue

Scrap Splat Challenge

In September, Generation Q magazine & Thomas Knauer

invited their readers to a scrappy challenge.

GenQ picked 30 random commenters to play,

and Thomas sent us each forty 2.5" squares,

each one a different fabric. 

We had to use all of the squares, in any fashion we so desired.

The only additional fabric allowed had to be solids - as many colors as we liked.

We had about a month to work on the Challenge,

and pictures of our finished project had to be emailed in by October 26th.

I, of course, finished mine on October 25th,

sometime between 11:25pm and 11:59pm.

(I know it was during the first half-hour of the Tonight Show)

Of course.

It was much too late, according to my brain, to take photos at that time,

so I waited until the next morning, before work, to shoot my entry

& email them to Megan.

So, here's my project.

Photos taken in my sleep.

I made the 3D flying geese

using the one-seam method

demonstrated by Ricky Tims on The Quilt Show.

Easy to make, but then when sewing them together,

there were a lot of fabric layers to go through.

The red & aqua triangles in the center

were paper pieced.

I drew out my pattern on graph paper first.

When I started to piece them, for some reason I thought

I should do it like they were individual pieces

(with the red triangles in 2 pieces),

instead of one long strip.

Duh.

At least I figured it out after only a couple.

Sheesh.

I opted for the overlapping flap for the back of the pillow.

Then I made an pillow insert to fit.

My brain is still tired from figuring it all out!

Is it time for a nap yet?

That pillow is so darned inviting!

I do love my RED chair too!

Hope y'all have a

wonderful Thursday!

sue

African Folklore Embroidery Pillow

I finished something this week!!  WoOOOooOoHOOoooOO!!!

I've actually had the African Folklore Embroidery finished for....well, a few years now.

I have been enjoying looking at it hanging up inside the glass door of my UFO cabinet all this time.

But....since Leora Raikin was going to be our speaker at my guild this month (TLC Quilters in Covina, CA) and I got a new couch & chair recently & they've been asking for some new pillows,

I decided to finally do something with the birdie.

To begin, I have to tell you that I'm a 'bag lady'.  That is, I tend to put things into bags, then the bags end up in a pile ~ well, you can guess the rest.  So anyway, on Monday I decided to go through a couple of the bags from the pile.  In one bag I found a bunch of pamphets & flyers from a Relay for Life from years ago.  In the next, junk papers & old receipts.  Out of the 2 bags, I kept one thing:  a Disneyland ticket from 1999!  Had to keep that, it only cost $39 to get in!!! 

 In the last bag I found 2 poly-cotton housecoats, that had snaps all down the front.  They were practically brand-new!  But, since I remembered that I had only worn them maybe one time, now they became....FABRIC!  I thought about the pillows I was planning to make & decided those snaps would work great for the back of the pillows, and be different & fun.  :^)

the back

the snaps (sideways, oops!)

Tuesday night I took the birdie off of the door & into "the Fabric Shoppe" (where my stash lives) & pulled fabrics for the borders. 

On Wednesday, I took the fabric to work with me to cut my border strips & the housecoat for the back.

Boy, did I have a heck of a time with that! 

For some reason, it just took me forever to figure out what size to cut my strips.

But, eventually I got them cut out. 

Then I started on the housecoat.  Oy!  I unsnapped it, so I could cut just one layer at a time.

No problem, except that I cut the first side at 17" and I really wanted 17.5".   Oh well.  I could sew a piece of the leftovers onto that side, busy pattern, so it shouldn't show.

Next, cut the 2nd piece.  Perfect!  17.5"!  Yay!!!

Until I went to snap the two sides back together & realized that I had flipped it the wrong way, so when the snaps were snapped, each half had about 2" sticking out.  What the heck, if I was already going to be adding one strip back on, why not just add a few more?  With that plan in mind, I cut them off even.

As soon as I got home from work, I started sewing.  Got all the borders on the embroidery and am very happy with the way it's looking.  I decided to use my red border fabric on the back, and sewed that on.

Take both pieces to the ironing board & press.

Then I go to layer them for the final seams around the outside, and they DO NOT MATCH!

I have no idea what I did, but I sewed some more strips to the back, then trimmed it to the correct SQUARE size, and, after about 2 hours of sewing, pressing & trimming....

WHOOP-WHOOP!  I'm DONE!!!

On the new couch!

On the new chair!

So I was finished in time to take it for Show & Tell at the Guild meeting tonight &

I got to show it to Leora too.  That was cool!

She did a terrific lecture & there will be a workshop on Saturday too.

You can see more of her kits & beautiful, hand-dyed threads at her website:

http://www.aflembroidery.com/

Now I'm going to join in the linky party at Confessions of a Fabric Addict !

C'mon over & join in on all the fun!!

Have a lovely weekend!

sue