Design wall October 31

Happy Halloween for those who celebrate it. We'll have a few trick-or-treaters tonight - fewer than 20. I bought our candy on Saturday. Yesterday my husband bought some more! I'm always afraid of running out.

On my design wall today is what was once a finished top. It's a Jo Morton pattern from her Jo's Little Women Club from a couple (several) years ago when Las Colchas had a club. I love it - but I decided I would love it even more if it were bed sized. So I'm going to use my new EQ7 to add "borders" to make it larger. I think it will be beautiful.

Go to Judy's blog to be inspired by more design walls.

Happy Wednesday

EQ 7

My birthday is a couple of weeks away and my family has been hounding me for hints. I mentioned a few things. Remember, I don't mind gifts with cords, so I suggested a stick blender. Not very romantic, but I'd really like to have one. I'd like a new camera, as well, but what I want is sort of off-budget for right now.

And then I saw it. The Quilt in a Day store posted on Facebook that they were having a smoking hot deal on EQ7! I hopped over to their website and found out what the price was and texted my spouse and child immediately, "I know exactly what I want for my birthday." Hubby complied (such a sweetie!)

I can't wait until it arrives. By the time I saw the deal and he called to order, it was already on backorder, so it will not arrive until close to my birthday. I love having something to look forward to!

Design wall 10-10-11

Here's a quilt "revival" I'm working on. A number of years ago (ok, about 15) I bought this top at an antique store that was going out of business in Tyler, Texas. It was half price - I think I paid something like $40 or so. I don't know anything about its history. It looks like authentic 30's-40's fabric, but they're in absolute pristeen condition - the colors are so sharp and the fabric is like-new feeling. But I don't think they're reproductions. Any way, as you can see, it's unfinished. There's not enough of the border to go all the way around.

So my next project is to take the border off the two sides it's on, cut in in half lengthwise, put it on as a narrow border and then put a wider border on. I'm determined to use something from stash as I'm still on my quest to use what I have before buying more.

When I get this complete I'll have to count the number of tops needing quilting and then get serious about which are going to the longarmer and which get hand-quilted.

Days of the week

I purchased a set of stamped dish towels to embroider at a recent quilt show. I finished the last one this morning while sitting on the sofa listening to the rain and watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix. I love to embroider. I started embroidering when I was about 7-years-old. Someday I'll post the very first hand-work I ever did (hilarious!), which I'm amazed I still have.

I love these. I wonder how something like this would do on Etsy. Are there enough vintage-lovers out there?


I'm about to make some white bean soup with gremolata. I didn't know what gremolata was until I read the recipe. It's lemon rind, parsely and garlic. Isn't that sort of like chimichuri?

Evolution of a design wall

Like I said in my post this morning, I have been busy since spring. I've been on a mission to complete UFOs and use up fabric I already own. I really believe I could sew for the rest of my life with what I have in stash and scraps. Did I say that out loud?

So first, I saw a quilt on the cover of American Patchwork and Quilting a few issues ago and had one of those "I have to make that" moments. Kathie Holland designed the wonderful scrappy rail fence on the cover of the August, 2011 issue. (Note added 10/7: Funnily enough, I found her blog just recently, but didn't realize I had made one of her designs until she posted a comment on this post!) I went scrap hunting in every closet and plastic tub in my house and turned this:

into this:

which became this:

There are some truly ancient scraps in this quilt. It's really a fabric album. There are pieces of fabric from dresses my mom Grace sewed for me and from dresses that I sewed for my daughter Grace.

I also worked on the leader-ender double 4 patch that's been hanging around for a while (on the right in this pic):

I'm strictly leader-ender-ing that one, though, so it might be around for a while.

Finally, as I was digging in one plastic bucket I found a kit I bought in about 1999-ish and since it was a quick-to-finish kind of a thing I put it together a couple of weekends ago.

I think I'll spend the winter quilting.

Check out other design walls here, thanks to Judy.

Well, hello again

Ok - it's now customary for me to go months without posting. I'm not even going to say I'm going to try and do better. We'll just see how it goes.

I have been busy since spring. I finished the restoration of a church member's grandmother's flower garden. All the flowers looked like this:


And now the whole quilt looks like this:


I was nervous to return it to her, but she loved it. I had previously replaced the binding on another antique quilt she has, a North Carolina Lily, and she was thrilled with that job, but this one's so much bigger. And this is her favorite quilt because her grandmother made it and she remembers sleeping under it as a child.

I did have to go a bit lighter on the gold fabric - but it's still in character, I think.

This project has really made me want to do quilt restoration as a side career. I would love that. I'd love to go to the workshops Nancy Kirk holds. Or at least purchase her dvds. But I think the next step is to find another quilt that needs restoration and restore half of it so I can have something to show people. Sounds like a good reason to go antique hunting!