Quilt 156 - Music, Music, Music (part 1 of 3)

Finally!  Got one finished! 

 

The center of this quilt is a clever panel that I found - and the outer borders are a print of "sheet music" (I couldn't believe I was so lucky to find that fabric!).  I bought 3 panels and am pretty much doing the same thing on each one. 

 

72" (H) x 56" (W) - bamboo batting - quilted on the longarm

 Here's a closeup of the sheet music fabric:

 

Reporting on my New Year's Resolution

1 hour a day on quilting is my goal for this year.  I'm not quite there, but am doing reasonably well, given various interruptions and distractions.  I've set up an Excel spreadsheet to track my hours daily, and so far I'm just under 1 hour per day (80% of the goal, actually).  

I haven't posted any new quilts because I've been concentrating on getting tops put together and getting the quilting done.  So far I've finished 5 tops and 3 of those are now quilted. 

The last part is the binding.  That involves cutting strips, pressing them in half, sewing to the edge (via machine) and then hand-stitching the edges on the back of the quilt.  Generally the whole process goes pretty fast, so once I concentrate on getting that done, I'll have some results to show.  

It won't be long now. 

 My New Year's Resolution

Since 2017, the front room of our house has been "the quilting room".  That's where the longarm is and where I keep my outrageously huge stash of fabric, batting and other craft tools.  

In recent years I have made very few quilts and had been toying with the notion of selling the longarm and getting out of quilting completely.  But there are projects I really want to do and, well, once that longarm is gone, that will probably be the end of my quilting career.  So I've held onto it.  

In 2025 I finished 2 only quilts.  Not a great track record.

This year I am determined to get back to work and have set myself the goal of averaging at least one hour per day of quilting time for 2026.  

We'll see how well I do.  I've set up a spreadsheet on my desktop to track my hours and we'll see...

 

 Quilt 155: Irregular Log Cabin - Autumn Colours

This quilt is made from a kit I bought in Florida in 2017 when I was visiting my cousins Toni and Beth.  Both of them have since passed away.  As I was working on it I felt them with me, especially Toni who shared my love of quilting.  

I loved putting it together and have kept the instructions for the design and am planning to make another one some time in the future. 

82" x 82" - bamboo batting - quilted on the longarm

 

Quilt 154: Christmas Placemats

 My most recently finished project is a set of Christmas place mats for my neice Meghan.  She and her husband are the ones who host the big family events these days, so when I asked her how many she wanted, she said "10".  

DONE!

One of the 10 place mats - 16"x11" - bamboo batting, quilted on the longarm (stippling pattern), polyester batting

  

 

Woops!  I'm way behind 

I was at a social function recently and met a woman who, like me, is a quilter.  We had a ball chatting about all things "stitchy" and I told her about this blog.  And...

 ...then I realized I haven't been keeping things up to date!

 Sorry!

 OK - I'm back and have been quilting but not posting.  I have a very tight schedule over the next several weeks, but will start getting back to posting, as I do have completed projects I haven't added.

Stay tuned! 

Quilt 153: Zoo Babies (part 2)

 "Wait!" you say. "Am I seeing double?  You posted this last week!"

Well... yeah...

I made 2 of these.  They're identical.

Quilt 152: Zoo Babies (part 1)

Another panel quilt - and again I had a ball with this.  Panel quilts are great fun and come together in a flash.  I've got 2 of these... Here's the first one - a simple panel quilt, but it's sooo cute!

 

 

38" x 51" - bamboo batting - quilted on the longarm

I had an absolute ball putting this together.  The center is a printed panel to which I added the green, blue, and gold borders, with all the fabric coming from scraps from other quilts (I'm determined to get my huge stash of scraps used up - there's so much in my quilting room that the scraps are taking over!). The quilting pattern is a simple "stippling" design, one that suits a very wide variety of quilt tops.

 

And here's the backing fabric, chosen (again) from my stash of scraps.

 

This one, and most of the others I'm working on, is destined for Inspirational Quilts, my favorite quilt charity. 

Stay tuned - more to come!

Quilt 151: Baby Turtles

Get ready... here they come!  I've been busy.  Finished 3 quilts, a 4th ready for binding and three more in various stages.

Here's the first one - a simple panel quilt.  All I had to do here was slap on the green border on the edges.  The rest of this is the panel itself, which is fairly large.

44" x 51" - bamboo batting, quilted on the longarm

The green border is scrap fabric from quilt 11!  Yes.... I've got quite a stash of scraps that go all the way back to 2011!

The backing is a soft fleece - feels lovely and the colours
are perfect for the top

Stay tuned... there's more coming!

Falling In Love Again

I have no explanation, really, but about the same time the COVID19 pandemic started, I stopped quilting.  I honestly don't know what happened.  I live in Melbourne, Australia - which happens to have been the most locked-down city in the world during the pandemic.  Don't believe me?  Just Google this phrase:

what was the most locked down city during the covid19 pandemic

...and you'll see it's true.

Now you'd think with all that time on my hands, and not being able to hardly even step outside the front door for months on end, well... what better time to be quilting?

I kept the machine dusted (LOL), and when restrictions lifted I had Brad, my maintenance hero, visit and give "Bernie" her annual servicing.  But until October of last year, the machine just sat there.  Then I made one quilt (a table runner and placemat set for my sister) - but that was all.  

I decided to sell the machine, but before putting it on the market wanted to get a couple more projects done.  I selected a simple panel quilt to make first - knowing I'd have a little "re-learning" to do.  As I cut the pieces out, sewed the top and then finally mounted it on the machine... yeah...   I've fallen in love again.  Head over heals just like before, maybe worse!  So there will be no sale.

I'm keeping Bernie.

As I sit here typing this post, I can hear the soft hum of longarm stitching - and I'm piecing together a kit quilt I bought way back in 2017.  And I'm falling in love again.

A Rose By Any Other Name (Toni)

 Her name was Rebecca Sue (Craddock) McClain - but I knew her as "Toni".

She was my cousin.

 

My memories of her go back over 65+ years. She was a fiercely loving woman, boldly energetic and always 100% "authentic". She always told it like she saw it, always disarmingly honest no matter the topic or situation. I grew up believing she was fearless, invincible, unstoppable. The older I got and the better I knew her, the more convinced I was of that. 

 

I remember her way of telling stories, the sound of her voice and her laugh.  She had a great love for animals and there always seemed to be pets, even a tame squirrel! She was always interested in what was "new" - so much curiosity about the world and life. She was my mother's closest confidant when I was growing up, and for the last 16 years or so she's been a huge blessing in my life.

 

And she was an avid quilter in her time. It was a passion we shared - and we spent many happy hours together at "The Quilt Place" - a fabulous quilting shop (sadly it's closed now) near her home in Titusville, Florida (photo below from my visit there in 2016).

I will miss her terribly - but the memories.... ah... the memories.  They will always make me smile.

October 24, 1940 - March 27, 2024

 Quilt 150: William Morris Table Runner and Place mats

My lovely sister Val adores William Morris prints (so do I) and I promised this table runner to her before the COVID pandemic... so it's been a while.  I finally broke my quilting drought and got busy with it.  I finished it, plus 4 matching place mats and, in my rush to get it off to her, sent it before taking a photo and measurements.  

Silly me.

So here's what I do have:

This is the interior of one of the place mats.  I edged them with a solid mossy green.

And here's the table runner as it's being quilted:

And the table runner after thee quilting was finished.

I don't have the measurements for any of this.  Oh well.  Nobody's perfect.

Quilt 149: Oh Baby! Charm Squares On Point

My friend Suzanne just became a grandmother last week.  She's been so excited about this baby, and her joy is just contagious.  So of course I made a baby quilt for little "Violet".

I've made this simple, easy on-point design several times now.  Violet's mum is especially fond of grey and pink - and this charm square set has a couple of soft dove prints and lots of pink, so it was an obvious choice.

48" x 48" - bamboo batting - quilted on the longarm

The stitch pattern I selected for the quilting is a simple "bubble" pattern, and I used a dove-grey thread for the top and white thread in the bobbin (which fades nicely into the white-and-green printed backing fabric.

As Melbourne, Australia, is currently in "lockdown" due to the COVID-19 virus, I wasn't able to deliver the quilt in person (Suzanne lives about an hour's drive from my house), so I posted the quilt.

Quilt 148: Jelly Roll Race with Aboriginal-Inspired Prints

I do love doing Jelly Roll Race quilts.  My favorite quilt shop had a roll of Aboriginal-inspired prints and I just couldn't resist it:

Have a look at some of the prints.  These are of native birds:

And the gorgeous dots an stylized animals:

So I made the quilt and quilted it on the longarm, using a gum-leaf pattern:

And here's the finished quilt:

48" x 64" - quilted on the longarm

Not Exactly Quilting... Mask-Making

Here in Australia we've been wrestling with the COVID-19 virus, as everyone has around the world.  We'd been doing pretty well until suddenly a couple of weeks ago, the number of new cases here in the Melbourne area suddenly started to spike upward.  So the authorities stepped in and we're back in Stage 3 lockdown, as we were just a few weeks ago.  One difference this time, however, is that starting at midnight tonight, wearing a mask when outside your home is now mandatory.  Failure to comply will attract a $200 on-the-spot fine.

Although nobody really wants to wear a mask, including me, I'm glad that they've taken this step.  It's something that is simple to do and doesn't have to be expensive - and there's loads of evidence that it helps.  So bring it on!

Of course... as the announcement was only made 3 days ago, there's now a mad scramble and face-masks are the new "toilet paper". 

I made masks for myself and hubby a while back using the "accordian" style which looks much like the disposable masks being sold here.  They worked OK, well, sort of.  But reusable cloth masks made with that design just don't look all that great.  I wanted something different - something with a bit more structure.

I found this YouTube video tutorial showing a very "structured" design that looked simple and fairly easy to do.  Just what I wanted - something that looks crisp and tidy!

So I gave it a go.  I had some success, but found some aspects of the instructions to be a bit problematic, starting with the fact that, when sewing, I don't use metric measurements.  Also, I don't have the cord elastic shown; mine is 1/4" "flat" elastic.  So I came up with a few changes to what's shown in the tutorial, and found my adjustments result in a mask that I can make very quickly with consistently good results.

So here's what I changed (you'll need to watch the video for this to make sense...)

First, I'm using rectangles of fabric which are 7" x 11" (original design is 7" x 10").  I added that extra inch so that I'd have an extra half inch on each side of the mast to give me a deeper fold over the elastic (which you'll see near the end of my instructions below).

Next, I opted for a more narrow seam allowance - my seams are 1/4" wide.

When it came to figuring out where the diagonal lines need to be - I went with 2".  In the image below, you can see where I've measured.  I start 1/4" from the edge, then measured 2 inches in.  The original instructions specified 4cm, which is, of course, shorter than mine.  But 2" worked out for me.

 

Also - the video shows the stitching starting right on the corner of the open side (see the red arrows in the photo below).  I opted to come in a bit more toward the center (green arrows).  This leaves me with a good size open area so that turning it all inside-out will be easy.  With the straight lines as I'm showing here, once I've turned the fabric to right-sides outward, getting the edges on the gap to fold inward neatly was a LOT easier.

In the photo, I've turned the mask to right-sides-out, stitched all around the edges, and ironed the folds just as shown in the video.  Then I stitched along the folds, again, just as shown in the video.

But when I fold the flaps open, you'll notice that I have more space between the top of the flaps and the edge of the mask.  (drawn in red below)

That's because I want a wider fold there, with an opening I can slide the elastic into AFTER I've sewn down the fold (image below):

Now, hopefully, the method to my madness will make sense.  In the photo below, you can see I'm sliding the elastic into that fold.  I've cut 7" of elastic, and slide in one end just 1/2" into the fold (photo below). 

Then all I have to do is stitch down across that opening (starting where the red arrow is pointing and moving across the elastic).

The elastic is now secured into the side of the mask's bottom.  I repeat this on the mask's top.

And here it is... all stitched together:

DONE!

As I mentioned, I found I can make masks with this design very quickly.  The first one I did took a while - but the second one ... fast!  How fast?  I didn't exactly time myself, but I fixed myself an instant hot chocolate and set it aside to cool just as I started working on the next one.  I ironed the fabric, cut the rectangles, and sewed it all together - and when I was done, my hot chocolate was still fairly warm.  Maybe 10 minutes?

My final tip is this:  If you think you'll want to make a few of these, cut out one rectangle with fabric and use that as your pattern.  You can just lay that fabric rectangle over the fabric you want for your next mask and ZIP!  No pinning needed, no measuring.  Just cut.

Quilting for a Friend

Well... obviously I haven't done much quilting work for some time now.  I'm gradually getting back there.

In the meantime, I do have something to show you.  My lovely friend Babs is an amazing quilter - and she recently finished a top for a quilt she's doing for her grandson.  She's been having her quilts professionally quilted - which I didn't know until recently.  But when she mentioned this, I said, hey!  I'll do it for you!  I feel honored that she trusted her quilt to me - and here's how it turned out:

60" x 80" beautiful applique quilt
(double click the photo to view a larger image)

She's an amazing artist, and everything she does is stunning, including this gorgeous applique quilt.  Her grandson loves motorcycles and just look at all the hand work she's put into this!  All of those panels with the white background are applique designs.  Little Tyler is going to be loving this quilt; you can bet on that!

Babs selectedthe Panto_Square Meander quilt design:

And, as you can see from the photo below, it just married up really well with her quilt top.

She selected white thread - and it turned out great.  The squares in the quilting reflect the squares in the quilt design and the white thread just disappears inside the white-background applique segments.  All good!

Quilt 147: Mini Zipper Bag

Well... as you probably guessed, I haven't done any quilting in quite a while.  Yes... it's been a long dry spell.  But I made a little something today - a mini zipper bag to carry my Tarot cards in.

I found a great tutorial on YouTube for super-easy lined zipper bags:  Here's the Tutorial

At last April's quilt convention, I bought a couple of 1/4 yard strips of lovely brocade fabrics, with the intention of making Tarot bags/pouches - but never got around to doing anything until today.  I want my bags to be quilted, so I grabbed some scraps of homespun and scraps of batting - and quilted them together using a simple wavy-lines stitch pattern on the Bernina Q-Matic:

 I'm pleased that in the photo above you can see that the way the light hits that brocade, you get different colours and highlights of blue, turquoise and purple.

For the lining, I have a sheer purple fabric.  And below you can see the dimensions I'm using:

Zip zip zip!  The hardest part of this project was putting the zipper back together as the woman in the tutorial video shows.. but I finally got it and in a snap my bag was finished!

LOVE IT! There's just enough room for my cards and one of my small silk Tarot cloths.

I'm going to make a few more of these, maybe even sell them!

Happy Easter!

I haven't done much quilting in the last couple of weeks (suffering from withdrawal now...), as I've been a bit busy with this and that.

And today - Easter Sunday!

We celebrated happily in the city with slow-roasted lamb, buttermilk biscuits (to sop up the lamb gravy) and black bean salad.

The entree was Baba Ganoush with little tabs of Turkish bread.

Miss Laka, our companion bird (photo above) tasted everything and loved it all, especially the Baba Ganoush (which she's sampling in the photo above).

I hope your Easter was/is pleasant, too!  I've got quilt projects in the queue, hopefully will get back in the swing soon!

Quilt 146: African/Asian Animals 1 - Done!

Ah!  After so long, finally something to show you!

Way back... uh... (how long ago?)... YEARS ago... I visited my cousins in Florida and picked up a couple of African/Asian animal "layer cake" packs. 

I've been doing a lot of quilts for my favorite charity: Inspirational Quilts - but one of the benefits of blogging (from my perspective) is that I became aware of how many of my quilts are very feminine.  I need to do more masculine, or at least "unisex" quilts for the charity.

So here we are.. with these layer cake packs.  I decided to get on with it recently, and not be too fussy about what designs, so opted to just do layer cake squares cut into triangle wedges and joined with a coordinating solid.

So I cut out 10" squares of a sunset orange and then stitched each one (right faces together) to a charm square, then cut diagonally from corner to corner:

 

Then I flipped them, ironed them and formed them into a pinwheel - SIMPLE!

 
I framed the resulting blocks with a solid black lattice, and here's the happy result!

60" x 72" - quilted on the longarm - bamboo batting

 And here's a cloesup of a couple of the blocks:

The stitching pattern is one I selected from the Q-Matic library because I thought it resemble the shields used by Watusi warriors.  The backing (and binding) are simple gold-coloured homespun, with a gold-ish thread (not metallic...just plain thread of that colour).

It WORKS!

So, OK.  What we've got here is suitable for a boy or a girl.  I started with 2 layer cake packs, and so have enough to make another quilt, but I'm not going to duplicate this one... going to do something different for the next one.. stay tuned!

Almost there...

At the start of 2019 I found myself with quite a problem.  I had a BOATLOAD of quilts I'd finished, and the once-a-week posts just really weren't frequent enough.  So I started doing twice a week.  But the past 6 weeks have been full of so many "non-quilting" interruptions that I simply got behind.

I do have a really lovely quilt that is in the binding stage - African/Asian wild animals is the theme.  I'll finish that one tonight and will post tomorrow.  And there's another one with a similar theme in the pipeline, but there's so much going on that I'm unlikely to have finished it by a week from to day.

So OK.  I'll keep the Wednesday posts up (and tomorrow will post about this latest quilt) and, of course, the Australasian Quilt Convention is happening, starting tomorrow (I plan to be there on Friday).  So I'll have some things to share.

Stay tuned!