Completed Swallows Quilt

 This is a quilt that I started a little while back. I put it on my 2026 Challenge and I decided to try to finish it in January. This was my original post where I just had it basted. Surprisingly, I did finish it! 

The back is just plain orange and so is the binding. I had a little extra orange fabric so I figured that I might as well just use it for the binding, too.

I really like my new Swallows quilt. I kind of like the size of this one, too. It will be good to throw on my legs or just lay on the back of the couch. This pattern is by Elizabeth Hartman and it came in a Sew Sampler box.

I am definitely not the best at posting blogs (or Instagram, or Facebook, or anything else). So this challenge might help me to make a few blog posts, too.

I am linking up my finish to Connie's Completed January quilt project

Thank you, Connie, for helping me along with my unfinished quilt projects.

Star Pulse Bonus Quilt

 When piecing the Star Pulse quilt top, there were extra half-square triangle blocks that developed. Then, an additional small quilt top can be sewn out of the extra blocks. This is my completed quilt from the bonus blocks.

I quilted it in a cross hatch and then added these small curves crossing the center. It does make the quilte a little puffy which is nice.

I used this cat Tula Pink fabric for the backing since I had a couple of yards. 

The binding is "bubbles" leftover from a baby quilt a few years ago. I have been collecting leftover bindings in a basket that can quickly be pulled out. This binding was just big enough for this quilt. 

I am now enjoying my small quilt from the bonus blocks. Thanks to  Quilting Jet Girl for this "extra pattern". Plus, it's always great to use up leftovers. I am posting my finish to the Star Pulse Quilt Along Linkup

 

Star Pulse - Shades of Teal and Blue

I had been following along for the Star Pulse Quilt Along at Quilting Jet Girl's Blog I finished my Star Pulse quilt top a few weeks ago. I chose teal colors for the quilt top. I worked at it to get it quilted and bound. 

The quilting was done in a wave following the edge of the walking foot. It did get very repetitious but I like how it came out.

For the backing, I pieced some yardage that I had in the house that were shades of blue.

I am posting my finish at Yvonne's linkup for Star Pulse QAL. Thank you so much, Yvonne, for this fun pattern and Quilt Along. I will be looking forward to the next annual Quilt Along. 

Cookies and Quilts - what could get any better?

 The Virtual Cookie Exchange is here. I will start off with the cookies, Yum! I love the Sugar Cookies recipe that a friend from work gave to me. I made one batch. They are a soft cookie with cream cheese icing. 

Christmas Cookie Cutter Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cups confection sugar                                2 1/ C flour

1 C butter, softened                                            1 tsp baking soda

1 egg                                                                    1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond flavoring

Cream sugar and butter. Mix in egg and flavorings. Blend in dry ingredients. Refrigerate 2-3 hours. Divide dough in half and roll out on floured surface to desired thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut into shapes and place on lightly-greased baking sheet. Bake until delicately golden - baking time depends on thickness of cookie. Approximately 8 minutes. Can sprinkle sugar on before baking. Or let cool and ice with cream cheese icing. 

I have had this tea towel with a Sugar Cookie recipe on it for quite a while. It has not been used and needed some prettying up. The tea towel started out like this. Just rather large and not so fun or delicious-looking. 

I trimmed it down to a smaller size and added some 2 1/2" squares - well, just because... It now looks like this.  I probably won't use this too often to dry the dishes because once it gets used, it will quickly become not-so-pretty. This should brighten up my kitchen a little just by hanging it over my oven handle.

On to my quilt project. I received the fabric and pattern from The Sweetwater Company for this table topper. I really just loved how the pattern had all of these Christmas trees on it. The rectangles are from a charm pack, plus some are cut from yardage. I made a plastic template from the tree pattern and cut them all out.

Christmas tree table topper

The Christmas trees are appliqued onto the rectangles. I used the blanket stitch on my sewing machine. The white fabric has little dots of snow on it, which I liked. It's hard to see in the photos, but some of the fabric in the charm packs, like this black-colored one, have snow, also.

The back is some Christmas fabric that I had purchased as a bolt end. It was good to be able to just cut a piece off and use it. It's a little time-saving when you don't have to piece a quilt back. This quilt is approximately 35" x 35" so it worked out good using the width of fabric.

In addition to my quilt, I made some Lined drawstring bags to use for wrapping gifts. I wanted to use these panels for the bags so they are a larger-sized bag. I had framed the panels and then followed the directions.  

Thanks for joining along on my Virtual Cookie Exchange. Please visit all of the bloggers shown below. I'm sure there are many wonderful cookie recipes and Christmas quilts!

Thanks to Carol at Just Let Me Quilt for hosting this great Blog Hop.   

DECEMBER 4

Just Let Me Quilt

Inflorescence

Songbird Designs

Words & Stitches

DesertSky Quilting

Quilting Gail

Days Filled With Joy

A Quiltery-For the Love of Geese

 DECEMBER 5

Selina Quilts

Just Because Quilts

Karrin’s Crazy World

Quilt Schmilt

Domestic Felicity

Happy Cottage Quilter

Nettie Sews and Lucky Quilts

DECEMBER 6

Hill Valley Quilter

Beaquilter

Crazy'boutquilts

Bumbleberry Stitches

That Fabric Feeling

Homespun Hannah's Blog

 DECEMBER 7

MooseStashQuilting

Ms P Designs USA

Quilt Doodle Designs

Quilted Snail

Sew Many Yarns

Just Sew Quilter

The Life of Grammy

Gifts for my sister's 60th Birthday.

 When considering gifts for my sister's birthday this year, I looked through the quilt tops that I had completed. Most of them were seasonal or whatever, not really a nice throw-size quilt top. So I did decide on a top that I had sewn from Rollin' Along. I had sewn the cover quilt sometime through this past year. I was pleased with how it came out and it did need to be quilted and finished up.

Sometime while finishing this quilt, I decided to sew a gift bag to hold the quilt. I have made quite a few of these Lined drawstring bags. The laundry bag size fits a throw-size quilt very well. It probably can fit a queen-sized quilt. I wouldn't necessarily do this much piecing on a bag for myself, because it did become a little bit tedious. For a gift, though, it is fun. Plus I used up quite a bit more jelly roll strips. My sister can store the quilt in this bag and put it in the closet when not using it.

In addition, the thought came to me to make a mini quilt with a cupcake for her birthday. I like how the cupcake came out, too. I think I managed to hurry up and zap this out in a day. This cupcake quilt block was in one of my magazines from when Quiltmaker put out the 100 Quilt Blocks magazine. 

I do enjoy these labels that I purchase from Sweetwater . I receive monthly labels with my name to label my quilts. This Happy Birthday one was purchased separately.  I thought it added a nice touch.

Diatom Quilt top completed

I completed my quilt top for the Diatom Quilt Along hosted by Quilting Jet Girl. There are quite a few quilt tops completed already.  

With mine, I just kind of pulled from my stash as the Quilt Along progressed.  I did have fat quarters of Rifle Paper Company so I kind of just mixed and matched those. The background and blue star points are Kona solids. I enjoy pulling from my stash now for quilt alongs because I do have quite a variety of fat quarters accumulated.

Thank you, Yvonne for this fantastic pattern. I like that the blocks are 18". That's a good size to sew some smaller projects. 

I sewed these 2 blocks as the quilt along was proceeding. I thought I could add another block down the road for a table runner.

Fantastic - Fast & Fun Finish!

I had previously purchased the Fast & Fun Lap Quilts book, but I had not sewn a quilt from the book . So, I figured, why not join the Quilt Along. I started to sew my blocks around the 2nd week into the Fast & Fun Quilt Along. But I was able to keep up with the weekly blocks because you can do a lot of chain piecing. Thank you Melissa at Happy Quilting for having this Quilt Along.

I did not have 2 layer cakes so I just started picking through my stash. I had fat quarters, plus some pieces of fabric that were left over from smaller projects. I kind of went for a "light, muted colors" look. This quilt will work fine for me to use on my bed in the Summer.

This Fast & Fun Sampler quilt is a nice bed size - 92" X 92". I just did my lovely straight-line quilting to get it done. I did actually sew the binding together before the end of the quilt along, so that would it was already organized.  The sampler quilt used extra sections left from the layer cake for a scrappy binding which is great, too. A number of quilts in the book use strips from the 10" squares to make a scrappy binding, too. That way your fabric is mostly all used for the quilts.

I love how the backing was this pieced section with the Merry-Go-Round blocks. And then I just had to add yardage to the top and bottom. Sometimes I get held up getting backings organized because I don't want to piece it together. This went together so nice and easy.

It was awesome that I won a Layer Cake from Lou Lou's Fabric Shop. I have not broken into it yet, but I'm sure that I will soon. By participating in this quilt along, I got to sew each of the blocks in the book. Maybe I'll sew Treasured or Keystone Corners next with my Layer Cake. Thank you to all of the sponsors for this Fast & Fun Quilt Along - it really does keep you moving along to keep up with the quilt top. 

A Bokeh for a Wedding Anniversary gift

 I finally finished my Bokeh Quilt from when I participated in the Bokeh Quilt Along at Quilting JetGirl in 2021. My husband's brother and his wife celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary on May 12, 2023. Their 2 sons were having a family get together for the event. 

I asked my husband if he wanted me to finish one of my quilt tops for a gift for them. I have over 1/2 dozen quilt tops completed but not quilted. He picked out the Bokeh quilt top because Nanci, my sister-in-law, likes purple. 

I just quilted a crosshatch because that is the fastest for me. Down the road, I really want to learn free-motion quilting but I need to practice on some smaller items first. 

This quilt is laying on our camper bed. The finished size is 60" X 60".

The backing fabric gave me issues. I prewashed the backing and by washing it, it was pulled way off grain. It is a cotton sateen and I think that is part of the problem. While spray-basting, I took the backing off 3 times to try to reposition it. My husband even helped 1 more time. 

When the quilting was done I did not like it at all. It would have been fine for me, but I did not want to give it as a gift.  My husband kept saying to add some "patches". In the end, I did decide to try to cover up the most obvious crooked section. On the below left side, 2 of those "little dots" ended right in the middle of where the binding was. This made the whole thing look messy and crooked. So I covered up the dots with this embroidered panel.

I ended up calling a local quilt shop to see if someone could embroider a quilt label for me. One nice lady agreed to do it for me. I needed it to be about 5" tall and about 20" long. I think it came out fine. It does help to cover up the very obvious bad section. She made me one for each side. This is the right side, this side did not look as crooked. 

The lady at the quilt shop said that really just covering up the left side made the difference.That the rest of the back of the quilt seemed ok to her. Homestly, I am glad to have this quilt done and it has been gifted. I am linking my completed Bokeh quilt to The Little Mushroom Cap Friday Finish.

 

Laundry is fun!

For the Project Quilting Challenge #14.3 , I looked up the Generations quilt block, for my 54-40 or Fight block. I used their paper-piecing pattern which worked out good. Then I decided to add the block to this Laundry bag.

I have made quite of few of these Lined drawstring bags. This one will work out good for storing a whole quilt. When we go camping, I may bring it along for packing the dirty clothes. I used scraps leftover from this quilt.

Threadology Front

Completed back

Completed in 2020. Clearly, I still used the 2019 label.

I do use this quilt quite a bit on my couch. It is a good size that I can just throw over myself if I get cold. Couch quilts are a necessity. 

It was awesome that I won a drawing for the 2nd challenge. I won these fabrics from Electric Needle.

They also gave me a 3 pins. I always enjoy some sarcasm.

Thanks for the challenge. We do not know what Challenge 14.4 will be.

Hungry Animals

 This stack of quilt blocks is my goal for May 2021. It will be a very simple baby quilt with the Hungry Animal Alphabet blocks in the middle. A good friend of mine will be having another Grandchild in June. So this will be for the new baby.

Linking my May goal to Elm Street Quilts OMG for May

My Sizable Spool Soon to be Sporting a Sofa

My One Monthly Goal for March is complete. This quilt top and back have been neglected in my cedar chest since about June of 2019. I decided to bring them out to see the light of day. 

This quilt is about 58" X 74" and the problem for me is usually the basting. I just tend to put that off, especially on a larger sized quilt. Once I started quilting it, though, it went pretty fast. 

The backing is a tiny bit not centered on the right side compared to the left side gray check. I did try to get the back centered but such is life. The problem was that I didn't have a lot of extra room on one side. I'm fine with how it turned out though. 

I did my usual cross hatch using my walking foot. I zig-zag my quilt sandwich before I bind it. That makes it easier for me to add the binding. It won't take me long to put the binding on. Then I will be taking it with me on a camping trip to hand-sew the binding to the back. I enjoy having some hand work with me while I am on a camping trip. 

Will be linking my March finish to March OMG at Elm Street Quilts

 Thanks to Patty at Elm Street Quilts for helping to complete my goals. My original post was here.

Animal Crackers Baby Quilt for newborn

 I finished this baby quilt for a new grandson of a coworker and friend. When Sweetwater came out with this Animal Crackers fabric, I pre-ordered the baby quilt kit from them. I have had the kit sitting in a dresser drawer for a few months. 

My coworker's son had a baby boy and our office decided to have a little shower. I did pitch in for the gifts that they bought, but I wanted to make a baby quilt for her. 

So I went to look to see what I had that could be completed fairly quickly.  Of course, this one could, so I got started on it. I just had to cut out the panel animal squares and add honey buns strips. I gave this to her a week or so later. She was very appreciative so I was glad that I made it.  

There's a lot of animals that the baby can name when he gets older. 

The backing is this cute animal fabric. 

It made a nice-sized crib quilt.  

Will be posting this finish to Lets Make Baby Quilts