P J TIME

Oh, my, it's PJ time again at my house. I've been selecting and buying fabrics for the past few months -- luckily mostly on sale. Some flannel, some cotton. I also managed to get most of the knit shirts that will go with the PJ pants when I was shopping at an outlet mall this summer with my sister. So I'm good to go -- almost.

Gotta clean up my space first. I will NOT allow myself to make any more scraps before I clean up these scraps:

Gettin' there

Ah, that's better. Small scraps:

And larger pieces

Admittedly, I have more fabric than I need--in terms of amounts, that is.

I have found that it is much easier to buy the shirts first and find fabrics to go with the shirts than to buy fabric and find shirts to go with the fabric. I still have two shirts to buy -- one for a 13 yo boy and a onesie for the 18 mo old. I REALLY like that piece close to the bottom of the pile with the black and red circles. I'd love to see it on one of the boys with a red shirt. But not sure any of the boys would be happy with it. I'll check that out next week when I visit one of my daughters.

In the meantime, a few things from my retreat work need to be put on the side burner.

This still needs to be sandwiched, quilted, and bound. (after piecing the backing fabrics.)

This baby gift needs a binding.

And this (flannel) needs to be sandwiched, quilted and bound.

This baby gift I did get completed while at my retreat. I just love the little snail fabric -- and the bonus was that I had the other fabrics in my stash to make it complete.

Hmmmmmm, now just which PJ fabric shall I cut out first?

R & R . . . & Q

Well now, shouldn't all R & R have some Q (quilting) to go with it?

It was a wonderful few days with my quilting friends (from Maine to Colorado) in the North Carolina foothills forest. Ah, so lovely.

And we did, indeed, get in a lot of R&R . . . and Q !

I had mentioned that I was going to learn to do a "coffee filter" block. Such a great way to get an easy curve on these block centers. (I played around with how I wanted to arrange them once I have enough for a quilt. I was quite happy with this, so I took a photo to remind myself just what I decided.)

I got quite a bit more done, too: a baby gift quilt completed, another baby gift done all except for the binding; a flannel baby charity quilt top pieced, and a "Christmas Angel" quilt top pieced. I'll show you those another day.

I also played around with lots of bits and pieces of fabric that I took along. Remember all those half square triangles. I came up with plans for 6 blocks using those little guys. (I just laid them out, took photographs of them and pinned them together in sets so I can redo my plan when it's time to piece them.)

Oh, and see that cute little mouse pin cushion? It was a little token gift from one of my retreat buddies.

Some of you have been wondering about the "gifties" I was knitting. I was planning to take these prayer plant cuttings (from a plant sent to me 2 years ago by one of our attendees) since I wanted to share the lovely plant with the group.

Four of the ladies flew to our retreat site, though, so I knitted these little soap bags for them.

I'll keep you posted on the finishing up of those quilts!

ALMOST READY !

Ahhh, just a few last minute things to finish up to be ready to take some projects with me to my all day quilting days with some special friends this week.

First of all, I wanted to get this quilt "sandwiched" so I can work on the quilting. I learned this method from my daughter : taping the backing to the floor and layering the batting and quilt top over it; then pinning and basting it in place. Luckily my old joints are still able to do all the up and down movements to do the job. (Although I've yet been able to do it all in one day -- need several rest periods!) I must say it's wonderful to have a tile floor so I can get it "squared up" nicely without to much difficulty.

Once it's all basted, I remove the tape, get out my largest cutting mat and trim it right there on the floor.

Sneaky way to show you the backing fabric, huh?

A few other pre-cut projects (a couple gift baby quilts; a "coffee filter" pattern that one of my friends is going to teach the rest of us; a fussy cut fun girl's quilt; and those half square triangle blocks I was working on last week) are ready to be packed away.

This is a close of up the Chocolate Lollipop fabric that will be the "coffee filter" quilt. A coffee filter is used for a circle pattern that is then cut in to quarters and put in a corner of a square. I will be making the circles with the small prints to be placed on the larger prints.

Oh, and these little items still need to be finished up. Shhhhh, not telling exactly what they are as they are little gifts for some of my quilting buddies.

Hopefully I'll have some nice finished projects to show you soon!

OH MY !

Don't know if many of you remember this Block of the Month quilt that I was finishing up about this time last year.

Well, there were seemingly myriads of little triangles left over. And not being one to waste any scrap of fabric larger than 1" square, I saved all those little triangles -- and actually had gone ahead at the time and converted them into little "half square triangle" blocks. I hadn't pressed or trimmed them yet, so guess what I've been doing lately. You guessed it:

I've been sewing little seams, pressing little seams, trimming little blocks; sewing little seams, pressing little seams, trimming little blocks; sewing little seams, pressing little seams, and trimming little blocks. You get the picture, right? By the time I'm finished with all that little seam work, I think I'll have about 50 3"pinwheel" blocks. Then, just gotta figure out what to do with them. I've got some ideas, but not quite certain yet.

I'll keep you posted.

MOVING ON

Thought it was about time to show you the progress on my "fussy cut" quilt. Not nearly as fussy cut as some, but I am happy with how it turned out. Now to decide what fabric to use for the backing. Hmmmmm . . .

(Sorry about that pink strip at the bottom of this photo. My camera has been doing funny (Er, maybe that should be "fussy" too!) things.

And on the knitting front:

This is a little scarf that I quickly put together for a child's Christmas gift.

This is what I'm about to start knitting for my college age granddaughter for her birthday.

I've got an olive green yarn for it. Sure hope she likes it. In the "cold north" (Brooklyn), I'm hoping she'll get a lot of good out of it.

So time to move on and get to it. Time's a-wastin'!

SASHES AND FUSSY CUTS

Well, I've finally gotten back with a photo of the sashing on my Irish Chain quilt. It's been sewn on for quite a while, but I just got around to pressing it.

I guess I need to start with the "sandwiching" process.

In the meantime, I've started on another quilt. My new one will use fabric from daughter Anna Maria's first fabric line "Bohemian" (sadly no longer manufactured).

When I saw this quilt at the recent AQS show in Knoxville, I was fascinated by the way the fabric was cut in the center of the stars -- each is 8 pieces placed in a swirling pattern.

While my fussy cuts are not as elaborate as that, I do think they are turning out quite nicely.

And of course with the colorful patterns of those fabrics, my quilt will certainly look different that the sample I saw (on the cover of the 2009 BH&G Patchwork and Quilting magazine).

I'm looking forward to getting it finished and sharing it with you.

CAN'T RESIST A SALE

Oh, my, this past Tuesday was the last day of the month, so my quilt shop had their end of month/end of bolt sale. Since I will be out of town the next three "end of month days", I just HAD to go this month! And I did "good".

Love these prints for some of my Project Linus quilts that I'll be starting on again soon. I even have a good "frog print" that will go with them.

This top print will go well with the two under it that I already had--most likely usable for a baby boy or girl.

And I could not resist this little snail fabric on top that goes well with the other two that I already had.

These above for Project Linus will all be disappearing 9 patch.

And this: Ahhhhh, just fell in love with them and it will be something for moi! I spent a good deal of time yesterday afternoon picking out some lights and darks from my stash to go with it.

Oh, and OOPS, I must admit that my shop had still another sale over the weekend that I went to and got even more fabric! Their already reduced ($5) fabric was buy 4 yards and get on free! So I got 28 yards of fabric for $4 a yard. And it's ALL very good quality fabric. About 15 yards of it is flannel plaids for boys' PJ bottoms that I'll be starting soon.

I'll show you that stash addition to my stash next time!