I finished the flimsy of the Five N Dime quilt from Kansas Troubles. It turned out great.
I've decided to take this to a longarm quilter for the quilting. All those pretty fabrics and lots of squares, it needs some nice curvy design for the quilting. I will be happy to just have an edge to edge design done. I love it, but I don't want to spend a small fortune on custom quilting. The colors are a little washed out in the photo, they are all nice, warm colors for fall.
Here is how far I have gotten with the Small Quilt Mystery sew along.
I have the center all done and I need to make eight more square in a square blocks before I start to put the finish together. It is going to be very cute!
Another project finished. This is from a kit my DS, DDIL, and DGD gave me for Christmas last year. I love sheep designs and this one is adorable.
One change I made from the original design, I didn't put stems on the two center flowers on each side. I fused the flowers down one at a time and stitched around them before going on to another flower. I accidentally used a red flower where I should have put a rust flower, so messed up the original arrangement. I ended up with rust flowers on the side borders and red ones on top, bottom and in the middle of the sides. I really like this arrangement so much better.
This is not even remotely related to quilting, but a project that has been ongoing for a couple of years. Do you remember the elm hedge trees I blogged about having to trim years ago? Well, a couple of years ago, those were cut down and the stumps left to dry out and die. This spring, we had someone come in to chop up and remove the stumps. Then all along that area along the wall, I shoveled and sifted dirt out of the gravel that was below the trees. You can see a pile of gravel in the lower right of the photo. That was a get up just as it was getting daylight and working until the sun came up over the mountain to the East and shined on that part of the yard. I would do a little then rest a few days before tackling it again. Eventually it looked like this:
Well, now we are ready to re-align the scalloped stones along the grass edge, then put down landscape fabric and put rocks back on top of the fabric in that dirt area. That will be a project for maybe October when it cools down a little bit. Once the fabric is down, I don't want to leave it exposed to the sun too long before the gravel goes on top. We can work longer when it gets cooler.
This has been the main project of the summer. DD#2 is expecting another little boy in November and he needs Grandma to make him a quilt!
I started with a panel that I have had for quite a few years. It is a Daisy Kingdom panel with a farm theme. DD wanted a farm quilt and I had fun designing this one. Love gave me the idea to use four patches as a border when she showed her black and white quilt a while back. (Thanks for the inspiration Love!) It needed to be bigger, so the pinwheels added some fun colors, too. It will be perfect!
Finally, I have been sewing along with Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill on a cute Christmas quilt called Sugar Plum Stocking Treats. She has released the first nine blocks, one each Friday on her blog. I have six of them fused and blanket stitched. I am stitching around number seven and number eight is fused to the background, ready to stitch. Number nine was just released last Friday, so I have the pattern but haven't decided on fabrics for the applique yet. As always, Anne designed an adorable Christmas quilt and the patterns are free. Stop by her site and check them out. I will try to have photos soon.
That about catches everything up. I will try to do better about blogging from now on. Happy quilting!
